Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Music Series 4: Kurt Ellenberger / Jazz / Improv and Play / Music Education / Music & Emotion

Transcript

Music Series 4: Kurt Ellenberger / Jazz / Improv and Play / Music Education / Music & Emotion · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and we're Live Doctor Kurt Ellenberger.
• 0:17
  Welcome. Thanks for coming on the show.
• 0:18
  I'm so happy to have you here. Oh, thanks for having me.
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  I'm, I got to say, I'm a bit jealous being in Michigan where
• 0:24
  it's about 20° and you're in sunny southern Florida, so.
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  That's right. That's right.
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  That's right. Well, we have a trade off and
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  that's you're sitting in your basement and no one in Florida
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  has basements. So yeah, that's true.
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  Yeah. Everything, everything has its
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  trade-offs. But I'll tell you, I probably
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  spend four or five hours of outdoors a day in the last,
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  probably in the last year. I make a very conscious effort
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  to do so. And I've really found that the
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  way that I handle stress and my productivity in general, I feel
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  like has really just skyrocketed since I've spent time.
• 0:58
  Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm sure that
• 0:59
  every I'm sure that, I mean, we all love it, right?
• 1:02
  There's a reason why, you know, the second that most people
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  retire and have an opportunity to kind of now that they're
• 1:07
  flexible, you know, cut, you know, head wherever they want,
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  they tend to go towards the warmth and towards the towards
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  the heat. But I'm really excited to to
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  record with you. Thank you so much for reaching
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  out, coming on. And I think that this is this is
• 1:20
  going to be really great. Tell me a little bit about your
• 1:24
  who you are in some of your experience please.
• 1:26
  Sure. Well, I'm a I'm a musician, I'm
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  a composer, pianist, but I'm also an author.
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  So I kind of do a lot of different.
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  I cover a lot of different bases, partly out of necessity,
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  but also because my interest has always been kind of
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  multidisciplinary. So I haven't, I haven't really
• 1:43
  been someone who's in one box. I'm kind of moving around
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  between different, different disciplines all the time.
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  And I like it that way. It just keeps me fed and fresh
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  and engaged. So yeah, I've I spent my life as
• 1:58
  a professional musician, made a living doing that for many
• 2:01
  years, and then decided I wanted to go back to school and got my
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  masters and doctorate from University of Texas at Austin.
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  And then then started teaching in the colleges.
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  And I've been doing that for 31 years and I just retired.
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  Were you in Texas most of that time or were you in Michigan
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  most of that time? I was not in Michigan for any of
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  that. Actually, I did my undergrad in,
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  I did my undergrad in Canada, that's where I'm originally
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  from. And then I did my master's at
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  UNC Northern Colorado in Greeley and then I did my doctorate at
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  UTUT Austin. So coming back to Michigan was a
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  decision. I, I had a job in Alberta,
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  Canada and it was so far from family.
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  My family is in, right across from Detroit in Windsor.
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  So I was looking for something in this area and I knew this
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  Grand Rapids area was so beautiful.
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  And I, I, I interviewed for the job and I got the gig and that
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  was 1999 and I've been here ever since.
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  Wow, amazing. I have to I have to get out to
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  that neck of the woods more often.
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  I, I, I, I love to travel. I've, I've, I've driven through
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  the country, across the country a couple of times and have since
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  fallen really in love with America just just because, I
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  mean, I grew up in New York and, you know, you, you grow up in a
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  particular place, especially a place as significant as New York
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  and as culturally relevant, I guess.
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  And you kind of think that you're the center of everything
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  and there's not much else that exists outside of you, you know,
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  and, and then you and you and you walk a couple of steps
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  outside. And you guys, how many
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  incredible things there are around and how many wonderful
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  different aspects of the country that there are that you just
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  have no idea about. And I know that Michigan and and
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  you're just a few places that you mentioned Colorado, Texas
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  and Michigan is really you got quite a diverse slice of America
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  over there. Absolutely, yeah.
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  And this area, West Michigan in particular, is just beautiful,
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  just forest, rivers, lakes, and it's kind of hilly.
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  And then you get to the Big Lake MI, which is just, you know, 15
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  miles from where I live. So it's it's really nice.
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  Yeah, yeah. So tell me.
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  So I would love to find out because I, I'm really curious.
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  I think one of the underlying themes that have subconsciously
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  come up from my podcasts are people that have passions that
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  find a way to make their passions their lives.
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  And because there's a lot of people like myself included,
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  that spend a lot of their life, their lives balancing work and
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  passion and the rest of their lives.
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  And then there are people like yourself that would have that
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  would take a passion like music and actually pay the bills with
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  it and actually make a career and a life out of it and
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  actually get to the level where you are, you know, playing with
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  some of the some of the greats and traveling around and doing
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  this on the, on the, you know, the highest level that people
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  really can play music. So how did you kind of how'd you
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  get there? How'd you how'd you end up from
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  point A to point B and what did it take from you to be able to
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  get there? Well, it really started.
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  I mean, I started music lessons when I was a kid.
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  It was just mandatory in our household.
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  We were a singing household. My dad especially, we just sang
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  all the time. We sang canons, we sang folk
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  songs, We sang, you know, everything, every day.
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  It was just singing, singing, singing.
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  So much so that when I when I got to meet other kids in the
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  neighborhood, I thought, that's weird.
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  They don't sing together. So music was a big part of our
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  lives growing up. And, and I was, I kind of
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  resented having to do lessons and practice for an hour a day
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  and all that stuff like like most kids do.
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  But when I was about 12 or 13, I heard a couple of pieces of
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  music. I heard whole Planets and I
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  heard Duke Ellington and I was just lit up.
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  I just, from that point on, I just, I had to know what this
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  was and where this music came from and why it appealed to me
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  so much. And from that point on, I
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  started practicing, much to the chagrin of my, my sister and
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  parents. Sometimes I started practicing
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  3-4 hours a day, every day. So by the time I was 16, I was
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  pretty good. And I was by that point, I was
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  working in, in Detroit, you know, doing various stuff with
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  big bands, with theater stuff, you know, just kind of a working
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  gigging musician. But I was the little kid.
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  I was 1617 years old. So it just kind of took off from
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  there. And, and then I just kept doing
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  that up up until it was about my late 20s when I thought maybe at
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  27 or so when I thought, I'm not sure if I can see myself doing
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  this same kind of lifestyle when I'm 40.
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  It just, it was, you know, the music lifestyle is weird.
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  You're, you're working when everyone else is relaxing.
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  And then during the day you're sleeping.
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  And then when you, you're relaxing, everyone else is
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  working. So you're kind of out of sync
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  with life in general, you know, so, so that's when I decided to,
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  to go back to school. I, I always had kind of a, an
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  academic bent and I wanted to kind of flex that muscle a
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  little bit and, and that, that's kind of how it happened.
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  Well, before we get to the next stuff, because there's a lot
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  that you already mentioned to the story, I want to just ask
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  you a little bit about for the music career in particular.
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  First of all, I love that you grew up in the house with music
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  like that. One of the things that I've been
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  thinking about, because I have a three-year old and a nine month
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  old is, is how I'm going to what the best way to instill what I
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  feel are the best values into them.
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  And one of the things that I've been either reading about, you
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  know, from educational books or talking to other, you know,
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  parents about, one of the things that they mention is how
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  important it is to you really show the kids what you're
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  passionate about. And you can't really fake
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  enthusiasm. And so when somewhat, you know,
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  a kid is growing up in a household that is, that spends
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  so much time singing and wholeheartedly and really just
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  loving it and enjoying it, and it just kind of gets into your
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  bones. But on the other hand, and what
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  I did notice this, the pretty strict contrast, the practicing
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  where you felt like you were kind of being pushed into that
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  did not really speak to you until you found music that you
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  yourself wanted to practice and play.
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  Yes, exactly. And then it was just a then it
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  was just like a tornado. I knew that's what I'm gonna do.
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  And I just, you know, my dad worked full time job plus he did
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  part time job. And I thought, man, if that guy
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  can, if he can work 14 hours a day, I can practice 4 hours a
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  day or five hours a day or six hours a day.
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  So that's kind of what I did. I took my inspiration from that
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  and it worked out really well for me.
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  And as far as genres go, so Duke Ellington, of course, is, is,
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  you know, one of the names synonymous with jazz, I suppose
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  the my first exposure to his work was in Community College.
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  I went for a semester. I was a terrible high school
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  student and prior to going to Binghamton University, which I
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  don't know if you're familiar with, I, I went to Community
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  College for a semester to get the credits and transfer in and
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  I was introduced to Duke Ellington Nutcracker, the jazz
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  version of The Nutcracker. And it blew my mind.
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  I mean, it was so cool and it was so fun.
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  And what some of the fun the some of the more creative
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  aspects of it that really spoke to me were the fact that were
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  the names that Duke would give the songs of his, I guess his
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  his variation of them. You kind of have his own
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  nicknames like peanut Brittle Brigade or something like that.
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  And always, and we could kind of talk about this a little bit
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  more a bit down the line, but that, that when you even if
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  you're playing the same kind of song, but the way the, the
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  arrangement changes and the, the instruments you're using and
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  the, and the pace changes, it creates different visions and a
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  different musical experience completely.
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  So there must have been something about jazz or
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  something about Duke Ellington that spoke to you as an 1112
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  year old, right? Definitely.
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  And I think what it is for me is harmony.
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  I, I just, I heard those rich harmonies and they, I was just
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  fascinated by it. Same thing with the Holtz that
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  the planet, you know, that, that his, that piece is kind of has
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  more modal music in it and, but really rich, thick harmonies.
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  And I think that's, that's what always grabs me in in any style
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  really, is if there's if there's rich harmony in it, I'm in.
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  So when you say harmony, and for you know anyone that's listening
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  sake that is, that's trying to understand.
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  Harmonies generally are associated with singing.
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  There could be harmonies between instruments as well though,
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  right? Or instrument and a voice.
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  Yeah, well, harmony, what I'm referring to there is kind of
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  like the, the, the makeup of the chords.
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  How how big are they? So is it, you know, most pop
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  music is just straight major chords, minor chords.
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  Well, what I heard in jazz and in holes was.
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  I heard these really rich harmonies with more dissonances
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  in them, and I was just really curious about what is that?
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  So for me, it was a question of I wanna know what that is.
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  I wanna write music like that, I'm hearing things like that and
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  and that's what kind of set me off on this on this journey.
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  And was your ear trained enough at that point to recognize that
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  that's what what captured you or you only realized that later at
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  that point there's. Yeah, I realized that later.
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  Yeah. I mean, I had a pretty good,
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  pretty good ear because we sang so much that I realized a lot of
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  other kids didn't have that. A lot of the other musicians
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  that I knew didn't really have that.
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  But I, I wasn't aware of what it was.
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  It to me, it was like a, a gigantic mystery.
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  It's like, where do these sounds come from?
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  And that that just really pulled me in.
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  And it still pulls me in today when I, when I hear those kind
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  of harmonies, I'm, I'm still just transported into kind of a,
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  you know, kind of a different world, which is what music does
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  to us, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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  I and it's funny because I, I actually I think I prefer as far
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  as my prep, my taste goes, I prefer the piano to the guitar,
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  even though I play the guitar and most of the music I listen
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  to is generally guitar centric because I'm trying to I guess
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  for better, for worse. The Ave. in which I'm learning
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  music and learning the theory is through a guitar.
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  And I know that a piano typically is a much better
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  instrument to, to kind of learn music theory and to process and
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  to understand it. But one thing that I that, you
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  know, just a similar note to what you were experiencing, I'm
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  a big fan of, let's say Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.
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  And I'll be listening to his solos and I'll be and, and, and
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  while he's playing, I'll close my eyes and try to imagine his
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  fingers on the fret on the fret board, making the, making the
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  sounds that are coming out at me and trying to figure out how,
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  how is he doing that? And, and is there a way for me
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  to able to do that? I know a lot of people have kind
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  of, you know, a lot of musicians have spoken historic, you know,
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  you know, about playing back their records and trying to, you
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  know, play by ear and learn exactly the riffs or whatever
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  they're trying to play. Is that the way that you would
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  practice or would you be a little bit more technical about
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  that, about the way that you broke it down?
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  Well, at first I just studied with people, you know, I started
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  with some of the great players in Detroit like Marcus Belgrave
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  and Matt Matt Michaels. And then later on, as I was, I
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  was already playing professionally and I always felt
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  like there's just something missing in my playing.
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  And I, I played a concert and this was in Alberta and there
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  was a bassist there from Toronto who I knew.
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  And he said to me, Kurt, you got to start transcribing.
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  And I said, well, I've done a little bit, but he says, no, you
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  got to do a lot. And so I went home and just
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  started transcribing like crazy. And then and.
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  What's that one that doesn't know?
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  So that is so you put a record on and you start listening to
• 14:18
  somebody's solo and you start, you write it out and then you
• 14:22
  then you learn it and you try to sound just like that person.
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  And from that you get their sense of time, their sense of
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  accents, rhythmic placement. You also figure out what kind of
• 14:35
  scales and that they're using over various chords.
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  So that's really the best way to learn to learn jazz.
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  You can do it by the book, but the best way to do it is to just
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  get in there, start transcribing and, and in doing so, you're,
• 14:51
  you're also training your ears. So as a jazz musician, you have
• 14:54
  to know, oh, the sax player that I'm playing with is using this
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  scale. I'm going to play these kind of
• 14:59
  chords against it and you have to be able to do that instantly
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  for it to for it to work. So transcription is how is how
• 15:06
  we do that. It's you just cannot get away.
• 15:09
  You know, you cannot become a really good jazz musician, I
• 15:12
  don't think without learning from the great musicians in the
• 15:16
  past and, and internalizing their voices into you.
• 15:20
  The problem then is how do you now, now you can play and you
• 15:24
  can sound like McCoy Tyner or like, or like Bill Evans or
• 15:27
  something, which is great. But what do you sound like?
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  So that's a that's kind of a crisis moment for a lot of jazz
• 15:33
  musicians because they spend so many years learning other styles
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  and then they're left with the question, well, what's my style?
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  And you have to find your own voice.
• 15:42
  You have to use that stuff, but have it not be derivative or
• 15:46
  imitative. Correct, Really interesting,
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  really, I mean, and the way, and I guess the real life example of
• 15:55
  the way that this manifests is how popular covers are.
• 15:59
  And you know, the generally the feeling that you have a great
• 16:02
  song book that you know, there's certain songs that any, that any
• 16:06
  given night, any, any musician can play or would play and they
• 16:10
  would play with their own flair and personality to it.
• 16:14
  I used to love the Springsteen covers, for example of the old
• 16:18
  Roxette songs. And he would sing, for example,
• 16:21
  there's a song and then she kissed me and it's and, and you
• 16:23
  listen to the original version. It's all cheesy.
• 16:25
  It's got the tambourines and, you know, and then, and then,
• 16:28
  and then Springsteen comes out with his, with his rock version
• 16:32
  of it and, you know, heavy on the keys and heavy on the, on
• 16:35
  the key and everyone kind of gets thrown solos and, and all
• 16:38
  of a sudden this song that was that was his influence and, and
• 16:42
  he had to learn how to play really, you know, transcribe it,
• 16:45
  like you said, note for note, but then would take his own
• 16:47
  flair and, and actually convert it into Springsteen's voice of
• 16:52
  the of the rocks that's playing, you know, that song.
• 16:55
  Yeah. And really, that's how all the,
• 16:56
  the, or most of the pop musicians work too, right?
• 16:59
  The Beatles learned all of those 50s tunes.
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  They learned the Buddy Holly. They learned, you know, Little
• 17:06
  Richard. They they they learned all those
• 17:08
  tunes. So from that, they got their
• 17:10
  chords. And then when they started
• 17:12
  writing their own stuff, the beginning, the beginning of The
• 17:14
  Beatles, it's using two or three chords, just like what they did,
• 17:18
  just like what they learned from from those other bands.
• 17:21
  Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Yeah, all that stuff.
• 17:24
  But then they take it a step further and start expanding
• 17:28
  their vocabulary once George Martin comes into the picture,
• 17:31
  who, of course, was a classical conductor, pianist who brought
• 17:36
  all that richness of classical music to them.
• 17:39
  So you that's how all the bands learned.
• 17:41
  They're copying these other bands.
• 17:43
  And then at some point they start writing their own tunes
• 17:46
  using those materials and hopefully they have their own
• 17:49
  sound. Sure, sure.
• 17:51
  Yeah, it goes and it goes directly I think with my with at
• 17:54
  least my working definition of creativity, which is basically
• 17:58
  an individual's associations. So if I say, for example, what
• 18:03
  do you think of when you hear this going down the road feeling
• 18:05
  bad and both of us know, you know, may know that song or both
• 18:10
  of us may listen to that song at the same time and walk away with
• 18:13
  very different visuals or associations or have it
• 18:19
  associated with different completely different
• 18:21
  experiences. And so and So what I guess all
• 18:27
  these people are doing what really that you, the more I
• 18:30
  think everyone should really do is make yourself familiar with a
• 18:33
  lot of different types of music. Because even if I listen to it
• 18:38
  and you listen to it and 10 other people listen to it, we're
• 18:40
  all going to walk away having heard something else about it.
• 18:43
  And our associations that they're going to be different.
• 18:45
  And we and if we ever to make our own twist on it, it would
• 18:48
  sound unique in 10 different ways, I imagine.
• 18:50
  Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really a
• 18:52
  fascinating question is why? Why do as the same music elicits
• 18:58
  such a different reaction and different people?
• 19:01
  So, So for myself, I, I really love probably my favorite jazz
• 19:05
  pianist is Bill Evans. And so I, I listened to him a
• 19:08
  lot. I was totally enamoured with
• 19:10
  him. And I thought, well, all jazz
• 19:13
  musicians love Bill Evans. And when I, I kind of branched
• 19:15
  out and got out of my little circle in Detroit, I realized
• 19:19
  that a lot of people were that I don't know, he's, he's too
• 19:21
  melancholy, he's too depressing. He's too this or he's too that
• 19:25
  or it just doesn't swing. And I thought, wait a minute, I
• 19:28
  don't hear melancholy at all. So what is?
• 19:31
  Yeah, yeah. Like.
• 19:33
  Music that you love, you know? Yeah, How does that work?
• 19:36
  Right. So, and, and they're being
• 19:38
  honest about it. They weren't, this wasn't being
• 19:40
  petty or something. But there were also stuff that
• 19:42
  other people were listening to that I thought that just doesn't
• 19:46
  reach me. So there's something really
• 19:48
  powerful, I think something psychological that's contained
• 19:51
  in the music that maps on to you as the listener.
• 19:55
  And then if you, you have a sympathetic vibration with it,
• 19:58
  you're into that music. If you don't, then, then you
• 20:01
  don't, right. I, I think that's the only
• 20:03
  explanation for that is why there can be such different
• 20:06
  reactions to, to the same music. So I'm sure there's been many
• 20:10
  times you've found a band that you love that maybe is indie or
• 20:13
  that no one knows about. And you bring it to your friends
• 20:16
  or your wife or, and they're like, I don't like this and you
• 20:19
  love it, right? I, I mean, it's just, it's a
• 20:22
  weird thing how, how our, how our psychology, our personality
• 20:26
  is reflected in the music that we listen to.
• 20:30
  Definitely, definitely. Another thing I've also noticed
• 20:33
  I think is our ability to discern the nuance of music also
• 20:39
  depends on how familiar the music sounds to or there's at
• 20:42
  least the setting or the genre the general tone of the music
• 20:45
  sounds to us. I did an experiment of my high
• 20:48
  school class last year who hate all good music, unfortunately,
• 20:52
  and, and I'm just kidding, but they, you know, I showed, I
• 20:57
  showed them the Springsteen song Badlands.
• 21:00
  And for a couple of reasons for the lyrics, I wanted to show
• 21:03
  them the example of a song that was kind of hopeful and, and
• 21:06
  challenging and hard at the same time.
• 21:08
  And the other thing I wanted to see was I showed them we played
• 21:12
  the song once a day for five days from, you know, Monday
• 21:15
  through Thursday. And I asked them just throughout
• 21:19
  the days to point out what they've noticed in the music,
• 21:22
  whether it could be lyrics, whether it was a particular
• 21:24
  drum, drum roll or guitar riff or piano riff or anything like
• 21:29
  that. And as the days went on, the
• 21:32
  descriptions became a lot more nuanced and, and they started to
• 21:36
  pick up a lot more in the music, whether it was lyrically or
• 21:39
  whether it was an actual music itself or even the melody as a
• 21:43
  whole. They started to notice more as
• 21:47
  they became more familiar with it.
• 21:48
  And then I would show them subsequent songs that had a
• 21:51
  similar kind of makeup as far as similar DNA as far as music was
• 21:56
  concerned. And they had.
• 21:58
  They were able to almost immediately start to discern a
• 22:01
  lot of cool differences that I don't think they would have been
• 22:04
  familiar with a week earlier or had been able to point out.
• 22:07
  Yeah, it's that repetition hearing, hearing something over
• 22:10
  and over again, whether it's good or it's bad.
• 22:13
  You'll tend to, they've done studies on this where they'll
• 22:17
  people will just pick up on it and it becomes they sort of
• 22:20
  memorize it and then they then, then they have an affinity for
• 22:23
  it, even though they might not have had that affinity the first
• 22:26
  listening. So it is weird how that how that
• 22:29
  works. And that's that's kind of
• 22:31
  something that the jazz musicians really built on in the
• 22:34
  early years because what they were doing was taking pop songs
• 22:38
  and songs that were famous from the Broadway songbook and using
• 22:42
  them as vehicles for improvisation.
• 22:44
  So when people heard those those tunes, they recognized, oh,
• 22:49
  that's all the things you are. I know that song.
• 22:52
  So and so sings it. It's a big hit.
• 22:54
  So which jazz musicians today don't have as easy of a time
• 22:59
  with? Although some of them like the
• 23:00
  like The Bad Plus and Brad Mehldau have been have been
• 23:03
  covering pop tunes like that and doing quite well with it.
• 23:07
  Sure, sure, sure. I actually, that's so I'm so
• 23:09
  happy you brought up improvisation into the
• 23:11
  conversation now, because improvisation at the moment, at
• 23:16
  this particular junction of my life is my favorite part of
• 23:18
  listening to music. And it could be so wonderful and
• 23:21
  so terrible. And it could be, it could be,
• 23:25
  you know, some of the most inspirational, wonderful music
• 23:28
  you can hear all day and music that makes me just want to RIP
• 23:31
  my headphones out and, you know, not listen to the artist ever
• 23:34
  again. And it happens with the best of
• 23:35
  them. It happens with the, you know,
• 23:36
  it happens with Billy the Billy Strings and the Grateful Deads
• 23:39
  of the world. And it happens with with myself
• 23:41
  in my backyard whenever I'm just fiddling around on my guitar.
• 23:45
  Jazz is really the mother of improvisational music.
• 23:49
  And from my understanding at least, and I know that as far as
• 23:54
  you know, again, influences go, the Grateful Dead had attributed
• 23:57
  almost all their improvisational influences to jazz musicians.
• 24:02
  John Coltrane was enormously influenced, was a huge influence
• 24:06
  to Phil Lesch, I believe the bass guitar player, and Jerry
• 24:10
  Garcia was a bluegrass player, but also had an affinity for
• 24:14
  jazz. And how we now as far as playing
• 24:21
  music goes, there's getting caught up in the music, which is
• 24:25
  the improv, the actual getting in the zone and kind of the the
• 24:30
  the tension back and forth between the musicians and the
• 24:33
  playing. And then there's the interaction
• 24:35
  with the audience that are the two big focuses I would say that
• 24:41
  most musicians talk about. As far as the performance goes,
• 24:45
  there's actual music and then there's the crowd and the people
• 24:48
  that you're playing with. How does that manifest in jazz,
• 24:53
  or at least in your experience, how you know?
• 24:55
  Was there one that was more in dominant in your experience or
• 25:00
  did you kind of switch off depending on the night?
• 25:02
  How'd that work? Well, I, I think in jazz, you
• 25:05
  know, the audience is, is a bigger part of it than it is in
• 25:08
  classical music. So because, because jazz came up
• 25:12
  in clubs being played live in front of relatively small groups
• 25:17
  of, of people until it, you know, until maybe the 60s when
• 25:19
  they started playing really big venues.
• 25:22
  It I think because of that, the audience has always been there
• 25:25
  kind of cheering the players on. So when you hear a great solo,
• 25:29
  you know, you listen to some of the, you know, Mile live Miles
• 25:32
  Davis stuff in the 60s, There's people yelling and screaming
• 25:34
  when he plays a lick and someone just goes, yeah.
• 25:39
  So. You know, so you do get that
• 25:41
  encouragement and people clap after your solo.
• 25:43
  So you're getting you're getting interaction with the audience.
• 25:47
  They're there with you and they're saying, Hey, we're
• 25:49
  following your solo. That was great and we're going
• 25:52
  to applaud you for it. So that that doesn't really
• 25:54
  happen in classical music until the piece is over.
• 25:57
  So it's a it's a different, totally different thing in terms
• 26:02
  of where that, you know, that improvisation, how that works
• 26:05
  with the other players. That's, that's really the, the
• 26:09
  trick of it, I guess, is to kind of wipe your own ego out and
• 26:13
  just let the music do its thing. It's it's so easy when, when
• 26:17
  you've learned how to play, to insert licks and to, you know,
• 26:21
  to not communicate with the other players and just do your
• 26:24
  own thing. So you have to go in there with
• 26:27
  kind of your head bowed and say, I'm, I'm, I'm here with the
• 26:31
  music and that's it. And and that's, you know, it is
• 26:35
  kind of a zeny sort of thing that you hear sports people
• 26:41
  talking about as well as like getting into that zone.
• 26:43
  And what that zone is, is that you're just reacting to the
• 26:47
  music and you're not, you're not controlling it, you're letting
• 26:51
  it do its own thing. So for me, for composing and for
• 26:56
  for playing, I, I always think about it as I just played
• 27:01
  something. What should the answer to that
• 27:03
  be? And so in, in that moment, I
• 27:06
  feel like the music is telling me what to do rather than me
• 27:10
  sort of forcing what I want to do.
• 27:12
  So if, if you can get into that, that zone of saying, I need to
• 27:16
  answer this just like in a conversation, right?
• 27:18
  You're not going to control a conversation.
• 27:20
  You're going to answer and then the conversation's going to move
• 27:23
  in this direction. And if you try to force it to
• 27:25
  stay somewhere or go somewhere else, then the conversation
• 27:29
  falls flat. You have to have that openness
• 27:31
  to say, Hey, there's things happening here.
• 27:33
  I'm going to react to them. And in music, it's the same way,
• 27:37
  except we're not using words. We're using, you know, we're
• 27:40
  using musical phrases and rhythms to, to communicate with
• 27:44
  each other. So that's awesome.
• 27:47
  That's awesome. And I take Keith, if you could,
• 27:48
  if you could, to kind of I want to highlight this point or kind
• 27:51
  of dive a little bit deeper into it.
• 27:53
  Taking back to a night where you're, you know, 2122, you're
• 27:57
  you're, you know, you're kind of in the middle of your music
• 27:59
  career and you're playing all the time, I imagine.
• 28:02
  And when you're playing and you're in this club or you're
• 28:06
  you're playing a concert and are you, are you focused on the
• 28:11
  musicians? Are you focused on the room
• 28:13
  around you and who's around you and the people that are in the
• 28:15
  front seat next to you? Are you, where's your head while
• 28:18
  you're playing the set? And is there any point?
• 28:20
  Do you kind of go back and forth?
• 28:22
  Can you walk me through kind of what your perspective is as a
• 28:24
  performer throughout the night? Yeah, so I mean, when I'm doing
• 28:26
  a concert, the focus is not on the audience at all.
• 28:31
  Like I'm really not. I don't want to see who's in the
• 28:33
  front row. It, you know, I, I'm totally
• 28:36
  focused on getting on that stage, hitting the piano,
• 28:40
  getting a sound out of it, determining, OK, what kind of
• 28:43
  piano is it? You know, I probably played it
• 28:45
  before, but that's what I'm looking for is how do I get the
• 28:48
  sound out of my instrument? And then how do I blend with the
• 28:52
  other players? So that's my main focus.
• 28:55
  And when I, when I was performing that, when I could do
• 28:58
  that, I found that that was really when I kind of got into
• 29:01
  that zone. So I'm again, when I'm out there
• 29:04
  playing, I'm, I'm kind of trying to be surprised by what's coming
• 29:10
  out of the instrument. And then whatever comes out
• 29:14
  because, you know, when you're improvising, you try things.
• 29:16
  You just do, oh, let me try this line.
• 29:19
  See what that sounds like. Sometimes it works, sometimes it
• 29:22
  doesn't. But whatever happens, you have
• 29:24
  to answer yourself. You have to play another phrase.
• 29:27
  So for me that that point was always forget about everything.
• 29:31
  What does, what is the music telling you?
• 29:33
  What did that last phrase just tell you that it wants to be
• 29:36
  followed by? So it's almost like you've
• 29:39
  you've got a little baby there that you're raising and it's the
• 29:42
  bigger it gets, the more personality it has and you have
• 29:45
  to deal with it rather than you forcing yourself on that
• 29:49
  personality. Right.
• 29:51
  So you kind of start the flow and then the flow takes you
• 29:54
  along for the ride at a certain point.
• 29:56
  Yes. And, and that, that's a really
• 29:58
  exhilarating experience. I think that's why people like
• 30:01
  doing it so much. And I, I do the same thing in
• 30:03
  my, in my compositions where I, I'm just sitting there.
• 30:08
  I write a melody that I think is nice and then I, I have to
• 30:12
  answer it or I have to write in a company to it.
• 30:14
  And oh, that's not right. Well, why isn't that right?
• 30:17
  Well, because this melody is now has its own personality and I
• 30:21
  have to be true to it, not to, you know, some pattern that I
• 30:25
  think I can put in or some core change that I think will work.
• 30:28
  So I think it's having that ability to say this is what's
• 30:33
  going on. How do I respond to it
• 30:35
  authentically? Yeah, that's yeah.
• 30:37
  I think that's what you get in all great music.
• 30:40
  When that's happening you, you get authenticity coming off the
• 30:44
  stage. Definitely you feel it.
• 30:47
  You feel it for sure. There there.
• 30:48
  There have been times where you're listening to a song and
• 30:53
  everyone's again, you're trading, you're trading off
• 30:55
  looks with instruments and just even where one pick drops off
• 30:59
  and one and one instrument picks up, just that transit from one
• 31:03
  instrument to the next is could be so seamless and so perfect.
• 31:08
  It almost feels like it's the same breath coming from the same
• 31:10
  person, you know? It's really incredible.
• 31:12
  Yet when the musicians are In Sync like that, which you, which
• 31:15
  you find at the top level, right, that's what you're,
• 31:18
  that's what it feels like. It feels like you're handing,
• 31:20
  you're handing the ball to the next player and, and the stream
• 31:23
  is not broken, right? It just, it just logically,
• 31:27
  musically flows to the next, the next person.
• 31:30
  And that, I think that's part of the magic of it.
• 31:32
  You know, especially of the group playing, you know, those
• 31:35
  interactions between the different musicians is so
• 31:38
  interesting to listen to. And what about musicians that
• 31:42
  kind of pop in with one another? I know that it happens very
• 31:45
  frequently with jazz too, but you know, you'll be playing in a
• 31:47
  club or someone else to just pop in or you're set, you're playing
• 31:50
  with him for this set or that for that set, or she's she's
• 31:53
  joining on vocals for this set. How what do you is that just
• 31:58
  more of the same type of process where you start off and you and
• 32:02
  you kind of just see where, where where you, you, everyone,
• 32:05
  everyone agrees almost to kind of hang on and go along for the
• 32:08
  ride and see where the music takes everyone.
• 32:10
  Yeah, if if you throw, I mean, so if you're playing a Symphony,
• 32:14
  you're playing in a Symphony. If the one of the second
• 32:18
  violinists is is sick and they bring someone else in, it
• 32:20
  doesn't change what the symphony's gonna sound like,
• 32:23
  really, right? In a jazz band, if you swap out
• 32:27
  a drummer or a bass player or a piano player or a horn player,
• 32:31
  it's a different band. And if you don't know the
• 32:34
  player, you really have to say, OK, we've got we've got kind of
• 32:37
  you have to deal, deal with it like you've kind of got a wild
• 32:40
  animal there and OK, so how, how is this person going to react
• 32:45
  with us? So the if someone sits in that
• 32:47
  you don't know, then the first couple of tunes is going to be
• 32:51
  kind of feeling each other out saying, OK, where what kind of
• 32:55
  things did this person like to play?
• 32:56
  How do? And that person is thinking,
• 32:58
  well, how does the band react to what I'm playing?
• 33:00
  And then it starts to gel, right?
• 33:03
  Yeah. So.
• 33:04
  It'll probably take some time for the set to really get
• 33:06
  moving. Yeah, it would take, it would
• 33:08
  take 3 or 4 tunes before you kind of got a baseline of OK, I
• 33:13
  think I know where this player is coming from and the player
• 33:16
  now knows where you know what this band is all about.
• 33:19
  And then then you can start taking chances before.
• 33:23
  That. You've got to kind of get to
• 33:25
  know each other a little bit. Definitely, definitely.
• 33:28
  I went to a Grateful Dead cover band with my dad this past
• 33:31
  weekend and it was a, it was a funk rock band, I guess.
• 33:36
  And I recognized a couple of musicians because they locate
• 33:40
  around they, they, they kind of rotate around the the scene and
• 33:42
  play with different bands for similar genres of music.
• 33:45
  And then there was a saxophone player that I hadn't seen as
• 33:48
  part of the scene yet. And you could see most of the
• 33:51
  time he was trying to really figure out where he where he fit
• 33:57
  within the in the stage. And he'd get there and he would
• 34:02
  start and he wouldn't, he wouldn't quite be able to slip
• 34:05
  through the door, if you if you know what I mean.
• 34:08
  And then, and then there were times as a set came along or as
• 34:11
  a jam would go along where he where.
• 34:14
  And I guess it's almost like the equivalent of like an underhand
• 34:16
  pass. Hey, here you go.
• 34:18
  You take, you take the ball now and you and you kind of, and you
• 34:21
  kind of has it along to him. Whereas once you like, if if
• 34:25
  you're playing music the way you're describing, it's more
• 34:27
  like snagging the ball out of the air.
• 34:29
  The ball's up in the air and OK, who's going to take it?
• 34:31
  Boom, I got it. Boom.
• 34:32
  You got it, you know, and you got to pass it along.
• 34:34
  Yeah. Yeah, it kind of works like a
• 34:37
  conversation, too. So if you show up at a party and
• 34:40
  you see three or four people who you know and they're having a
• 34:44
  conversation, you can kind of move up to them, kind of stand
• 34:48
  there, kind of get in and then wait, wait for an opening to,
• 34:53
  you know, to say hello or whatever.
• 34:54
  But you don't barge in and start talking, although some people do
• 34:58
  that too, right? And but you know, it breaks the
• 35:00
  social contract a little bit. And in, in jazz there there
• 35:03
  definitely is that, that that agreement that, hey, we're all
• 35:07
  playing together. We all have the freedom to do
• 35:10
  whatever we want. But that freedom comes with a
• 35:13
  great deal of responsibility to be sensitive to all of the other
• 35:17
  voices around you. And I think that's, again,
• 35:19
  that's that's one of the magical parts of of jazz or any
• 35:23
  improvisational music is you have to have that awareness and
• 35:26
  sensitivity to not constantly be pushing yourself to know when
• 35:31
  you need to be here and when it's your, when it's your turn
• 35:34
  to step forward and make your statement.
• 35:37
  Yeah, I've been. I want to make one last point.
• 35:40
  I want to ask you another question real quick.
• 35:42
  I was reading a book called I heard there was a secret chord
• 35:46
  by a gentleman, Daniel Leviton, who's I think a neurologist or
• 35:51
  and also a musician. And one thing that he's also
• 35:53
  talked about regarding jazz was that there's also almost the
• 35:57
  vocal improv. And the example he gave was the
• 35:59
  famous Ella Fitzgerald concert in Germany where she was singing
• 36:03
  Big Mac, the Knife and she forgot the the words and managed
• 36:08
  to scat an improv her way through.
• 36:10
  He said at a certain point, once you have the rhythm and once you
• 36:14
  have the beat and once you even have the act like what you say,
• 36:17
  there's more details, especially with, with saying things out
• 36:21
  loud, there's a certain rhythm to the way that you talk.
• 36:25
  But and so, so once you even have that rhythm, you could fill
• 36:28
  in the blanks with whatever you want as long as it fits.
• 36:31
  And he gave that, you know, he gave Ella as a perfect example
• 36:33
  of a vocal, A vocal improvisationalist.
• 36:36
  Yeah, absolutely. And and then look at look at how
• 36:39
  that became the, you know, the basis for so much of the R&B
• 36:43
  stuff. Like James Brown.
• 36:45
  He's not saying anything, or if he is, the words don't matter at
• 36:50
  all. It's the rhythm and the
• 36:52
  inflection and the energy, right?
• 36:54
  It's yeah. Yeah, yeah, It's incredible.
• 36:57
  So how would you define jazz music if you had to strip it
• 37:02
  down to its roots? And if someone were to say a
• 37:07
  student walks into your class and says I've heard the word
• 37:10
  jazz, but I don't know what it means, how do you what's a
• 37:13
  one-on-one understanding of what jazz is?
• 37:15
  Oh boy, that's a, that's a, that's a big question.
• 37:18
  What I teach, what I've taught my students, and I think what
• 37:21
  they've come to realize when I've taught jazz history is that
• 37:25
  jazz really isn't a genre in the way that, say, country music is
• 37:30
  a genre or rock is a is a genre because there are so many
• 37:33
  different types of jazz that by the time you get to now, it's
• 37:39
  there's so there's so many things going on.
• 37:41
  You can't put your finger on one thing and say, well, that's the
• 37:43
  mainstream. You could do that in the 20s and
• 37:46
  30s and 40s and 50s to some extent, 60s even a little bit.
• 37:51
  But then it then it just starts to to get too big and it also
• 37:55
  spreads across the world. So then you've got people in
• 37:58
  Portugal playing jazz, but it doesn't sound like American
• 38:02
  jazz. Is it still jazz?
• 38:03
  Of course it is. It's their jazz.
• 38:05
  So what makes it? What makes it that jazz?
• 38:09
  Yeah. So I think what it is, is really
• 38:12
  jazz is an is an approach to making music that's
• 38:15
  collaborative, that's improvisational, and that is
• 38:19
  constantly morphing it. It never accepts a perfect, oh,
• 38:24
  we're done now. It never writes it down and
• 38:26
  says, OK, that's perfect. It's always striving for that
• 38:29
  next thing, which classical music does to a certain degree
• 38:33
  as well. But it's written out, right.
• 38:35
  So there, it's the interpretation of what's already
• 38:37
  written that is so, so important.
• 38:40
  But I think that's what it is with jazz.
• 38:41
  It's, it's an approach to music making that is, as I said,
• 38:45
  collaborative, improvisational that doesn't require a certain
• 38:51
  set of people like you. You could have, you could have
• 38:53
  an accordion, a violin and a trumpet and they could be
• 38:58
  playing jazz or you could have a, a, a piano and a cello and a
• 39:03
  trombone and they, they could be playing jazz.
• 39:05
  So it's this kind of amorphous target that's always out there
• 39:10
  just beyond reach and and players across the world are
• 39:14
  trying to reach that using a lot of folk elements.
• 39:17
  I would say that's a big part of it too.
• 39:19
  Jazz. Jazz music relies on regional
• 39:22
  folk flavors for its for its sound.
• 39:27
  Yeah. And I bet that's where that
• 39:28
  associative aspect of creativity that we spoke about earlier
• 39:31
  comes from. The people that were, you know,
• 39:35
  for example, the people that grew up perhaps in the South
• 39:37
  would be and have a different type of musical cultural
• 39:41
  influence as to the way that they're going to play their jazz
• 39:45
  as opposed to, again, Portuguese, the Portuguese or
• 39:47
  something like that. Yeah.
• 39:49
  Absolutely. Even like take a look at in the
• 39:51
  50s New York jazz versus West Coast jazz.
• 39:56
  I mean, the, the West Coast jazz had a, a cool easygoing, there's
• 40:02
  no, you know, there's no traffic out here.
• 40:04
  There's, you know, where's the, the New York jazz had that kind
• 40:08
  of frenetic big city energy. So it was already bifurcating
• 40:13
  then regionally, which is really cool.
• 40:16
  So imagine then, if you if you take the Jazz dodo bird and you
• 40:20
  fly it to Italy. Yeah.
• 40:23
  OK. In a couple of generations, it
• 40:25
  doesn't look like the American jazz anymore.
• 40:27
  So that's been kind of a big discussion is, you know,
• 40:31
  European jazz or Japanese jazz or I mean, it's all over the
• 40:35
  world. And wherever it goes, it uses
• 40:37
  that collaborative improvisational approach and it
• 40:41
  kind of goes into or utilizes some of the cultural folk
• 40:46
  elements of whatever region it's in.
• 40:49
  It's really cool. Does that kind of progressive
• 40:51
  perspective embody itself in the types of people that play it?
• 40:56
  Also, are the people that play jazz typically open and warm and
• 40:59
  welcoming in that kind of capacity?
• 41:02
  Personally, because I feel like if your music has to, if your
• 41:06
  music has to be so off the cuff and improvisational, and you
• 41:11
  have to be willing to, yeah, you really have to listen.
• 41:14
  You have to be able to be a hearer.
• 41:15
  A hearer or a listener does that?
• 41:17
  Does that usually translate over to the table of people that play
• 41:19
  it? You think?
• 41:20
  Boy, that's hard to say because they're just like with like with
• 41:23
  everything. There are so many different
• 41:25
  kinds of people playing this music.
• 41:28
  Some are some are very introverted and quiet, but then
• 41:32
  they speak with with their instrument like, like a like a
• 41:36
  Kenny Wheeler, for example. Just the sweetest, sweetest man,
• 41:41
  quiet, introverted, thoughtful. But when he picked up his horn
• 41:46
  lookout, all of a sudden there's just this wild sounds coming out
• 41:51
  of the flugelhorn or trumpet. And then there are others that
• 41:54
  are really, you know, kind of in your face and brash and, you
• 41:58
  know, really aggressive. So I wouldn't say there's a
• 42:01
  certain personality type there. There's it's all over the place,
• 42:06
  just like every everything else. You gotcha.
• 42:09
  I gotcha. I gotcha.
• 42:10
  Yeah, Yeah, it's really interesting.
• 42:14
  Let's talk a little bit about. I want to, there's a couple more
• 42:17
  things I want to get to for sure, jazz theory, which I think
• 42:21
  I'm going to need your help breaking down in a very simple
• 42:23
  level. And I think the piano that you
• 42:24
  have there is going to be very simple a very useful to have to
• 42:28
  break that down. I also wanted to talk about
• 42:30
  major and minor chords because I have a friend of mine who's a
• 42:33
  piano player. Excuse me.
• 42:36
  And he used to lament to me that all the Jewish songs that we
• 42:39
  sang growing up were all in minor chords.
• 42:41
  And he was upset about that. And then I was listening to a
• 42:44
  podcast the other day and, you know, had nothing to do with
• 42:46
  music, but the, the, the, the, the person recording happened to
• 42:51
  be a, a piano player and also was complaining about the same
• 42:54
  thing. He said that there's something
• 42:56
  is the Jewish music, you grow up, it's all a minor, It's all
• 42:58
  sad. And then the Christmas music is
• 43:00
  major and uplifting. And.
• 43:02
  And, you know, we talk a little bit about that.
• 43:06
  First of all, I didn't want to actually ask your opinion
• 43:08
  because I think that most Jewish music that people associate with
• 43:10
  Jewish music is really Eastern European music.
• 43:12
  Yeah. And because that's where a lot
• 43:14
  of it came from, Poland and Germany.
• 43:15
  And that in that part of the world is it that it's Jewish
• 43:18
  music that's mostly a minor. Is that Eastern European music
• 43:21
  that's mostly a minor key, Minor keys?
• 43:23
  And what's the difference between minor and major?
• 43:25
  Well, I think the further E you go, the more modal the music
• 43:29
  gets. So it gets more minor and and
• 43:32
  darker as you get into the folk in the folk traditions, right?
• 43:38
  The difference between major and minor is just one note.
• 43:41
  So you play a major chord and you take the middle note, which
• 43:46
  is an E I'm playing ACC major chord and you move it down a
• 43:49
  half a step to E flat. And now?
• 43:54
  OK, so I understood what you just said, but I want to break
• 43:57
  down what you just said real quickly.
• 43:58
  Oh, no, it doesn't. So the C So when you said that
• 44:01
  you're going to so the C A chord, a chord is made-up of
• 44:04
  several individual notes, right? A chord is a minimum of three
• 44:08
  notes. Minimum of three notes 3.
• 44:10
  Different notes. Three different notes.
• 44:12
  Yep. So C would be composed of AC and
• 44:14
  E and. AG Yep.
• 44:18
  AG OK, gotcha. SO.
• 44:21
  There's all three. Gotcha.
• 44:23
  And so for it to be major and for it to be minor, what would
• 44:27
  be the difference? Now, so the major chord has an E
• 44:30
  in it, which is 1234, half steps up from the C OK.
• 44:35
  The minor chord has an E flat in it, which is only three half
• 44:39
  steps up from the C So it's just that changing that one note
• 44:43
  takes us from a happy chord to, you know, the minor chord is
• 44:48
  generally associated with kind of sadness, melancholy,
• 44:51
  introversion, tragedy. So you go from to it's quite a
• 45:08
  change, right? Just changing that one note
• 45:11
  changes the mood entirely. And that's been a big discussion
• 45:15
  in music theory is where does that note?
• 45:18
  Why does that work? Why does the minor chord work?
• 45:22
  Because in terms of the harmonic series, are you familiar with
• 45:26
  what that is? Break it down please, if you
• 45:28
  don't mind. Sure.
• 45:29
  So if I play any, any sound that's made is governed by
• 45:33
  what's called the harmonic series.
• 45:35
  And what that means is that when you play any note, it's not just
• 45:40
  that note you're hearing, you're hearing a bunch of notes that
• 45:44
  are part of it that that we call partials because they're a
• 45:47
  partial part of that note. And sure, those pitches are
• 45:52
  really quite fascinating. The pitches that are included
• 45:55
  there are very are fascinating because they're directly linked
• 45:59
  to the length of the string that is needed to play that note.
• 46:03
  So if I play AC and the next note in the first note in the
• 46:09
  harmonic series which is number 2 is the C above it and we call.
• 46:16
  Them, and that's probably the same note, but they sound, but
• 46:18
  one's higher, one's lower. Right.
• 46:20
  But in reality, they're two different notes.
• 46:23
  We're just hearing the fact that the C above, which is number 2
• 46:28
  in the harmonic series, is in the lower note already.
• 46:32
  So when we play it, it's reinforcing what's already
• 46:35
  there. And here's the freaky part of
• 46:38
  it. If the string length for the low
• 46:41
  C is is, let's call it one, the string length for the next C is
• 46:45
  half of that. It corresponds precisely to its
• 46:48
  position in the harmonic series. OK, I think I understand that.
• 46:55
  But in other words, so you have, I'm sorry, so you have notes,
• 47:02
  which is a compilation of pitches to get.
• 47:06
  They're composited of yes, a bunch of pitches called
• 47:10
  partials. Yes, right.
• 47:13
  And it's and so AC is made-up of several different partials or
• 47:17
  pitches. It's made-up of dozens of
• 47:19
  different pitches, dozens. And, and here's the interesting
• 47:22
  part is depending on how the sound is, is produced, the, the
• 47:27
  sound of the instrument produces or accents different partials.
• 47:31
  So OK, the trombones, for example.
• 47:33
  So think about, think about a trombone, how rich that sound
• 47:36
  is, and then think of a flute and which is, which is much
• 47:39
  thinner sound. The reason they sound different
• 47:42
  is because the trombone emphasizes a lot of the odd
• 47:45
  numbered partials, whereas the flute emphasizes the even
• 47:48
  numbered partials. So.
• 47:50
  Wow, interesting. The, the, So the harmonic series
• 47:53
  governs every sound that you make because no matter what the
• 47:56
  sound is, it's that it's like, it's like gravity.
• 47:59
  It's like saying, well, I'm going to throw a ball up, it's
• 48:01
  coming down. The harmonic series is the same
• 48:04
  way. Every sound that is naturally
• 48:06
  made is going to have those partials in it.
• 48:10
  And depending on how that sound is made, they're going to
• 48:12
  emphasize different ones of those partials.
• 48:15
  And that's what count. That's why a trombone sounds
• 48:17
  like a trombone. That's why my voice sounds the
• 48:20
  way it does. That's why your voice does.
• 48:22
  That's why a piano sounds the way it does.
• 48:25
  It's all governed by that harmonic series.
• 48:28
  So the freaky thing is each when you go up the harmonic series
• 48:33
  each note. So the second note requires 1/2
• 48:36
  the string length of the first note.
• 48:39
  And why would that be? It's, that's just, that's just
• 48:42
  how it is. Yeah, it's it's.
• 48:45
  That's just how it works. Can you?
• 48:47
  Can you notice it in the sound? Have you played to the 2 notes
• 48:50
  you'd be able to? Would you be able to emphasize
• 48:52
  that? Yeah.
• 48:53
  So if I play the two notes together, so here's AC.
• 49:00
  So we call those notes both C, but in reality, they're
• 49:03
  completely different pitches. The reason, totally the reason
• 49:07
  that we hear them as being a higher or lower version of each
• 49:09
  other is because their waveforms are symmetrical.
• 49:13
  So imagine a string length that's just doing this.
• 49:16
  And then if the half one comes in, it's dividing that string
• 49:19
  length in half. So our ear computes that and
• 49:23
  says, oh, that's a symmetrical pattern.
• 49:26
  It divides easily by two. If I play something that
• 49:29
  doesn't, if I play a, I'll play like a dude, what's that going
• 49:33
  to be like a well, kind of a kind of a nine, but you'll get
• 49:37
  the idea if I play this. So what your ear is hearing
• 49:43
  there is that. It doesn't.
• 49:45
  It's not those. Those two waves are not
• 49:47
  symmetrical. They don't line up.
• 49:50
  So a way to think about this is if I asked you to play or if I
• 49:53
  asked you to take a 8 1/2 and 11 piece of paper and fold it in
• 49:57
  half, easy. Yeah.
• 49:58
  If I ask you to fold it in quarters, easy.
• 50:02
  I mean eights, yeah, it gets, you know, at some point the
• 50:04
  paper gets hard to deal with. But we can do that.
• 50:06
  If I ask you to fold it in 11, you can't do it right then we
• 50:12
  need math. So that's what the ear is
• 50:15
  actually hearing when we hear consonant sounds.
• 50:18
  So the right the ear is hearing the symmetry of those sounds.
• 50:24
  And it also supplies when it's hearing something that's that's
• 50:29
  that's not symmetrical, that's complicated asymmetrical, it's
• 50:33
  supplying your ear supplies the answer, the closest answer of of
• 50:38
  a multiple of 2 usually going down.
• 50:42
  Right, because we already know it's the most predictable and
• 50:46
  easiest. Again, if you're going to cut it
• 50:48
  in half, it's easy. You could do it without
• 50:51
  expending a lot of mental effort.
• 50:54
  It's not very hard to do. So your brain will pick up the
• 50:57
  fact that this feels like the next place for this to go
• 50:59
  because it's it's, it's already they, they, they go together.
• 51:04
  It's looking for that symmetry and it has it has the ability to
• 51:08
  supply the right note even though you've not heard it.
• 51:12
  And that's that's what gives music it's it's narrative.
• 51:15
  Without that music wouldn't be able to quote UN quote tell a
• 51:18
  story, right? It just.
• 51:20
  And it's really hard to listen to if if everything sounded
• 51:24
  unfamiliar. No.
• 51:25
  Yeah. Or like you're gonna computer,
• 51:27
  it wouldn't be pleasant to listen to.
• 51:28
  Right, because you. You you wouldn't be able to have
• 51:31
  expectations with it. Yeah.
• 51:33
  So let me play you something and I'll ask you what the next note
• 51:37
  should be. OK, so here we go.
• 51:57
  Very good, you nailed it. So the funny part is I didn't
• 52:01
  play that note. That was ACI knew it.
• 52:04
  You knew it. Your brain calculated from the
• 52:07
  complicated stuff that I played before.
• 52:09
  Your brain said the closest multiple of 2 is 1 down.
• 52:15
  So I gave you what you wanted, right?
• 52:18
  You were expecting that note and I gave it to you.
• 52:20
  What if I didn't? What if I did this?
• 52:39
  Took you by surprise, right? No.
• 52:40
  That was a surprise, right? That was wrong.
• 52:43
  Yeah. I felt wrong in my chest right
• 52:45
  there. It felt like I have not.
• 52:46
  That was not what I was looking for.
• 52:48
  Yeah, I gave you the note, but I changed the harmony under it.
• 52:51
  So in that way you're taking on a sound narrative, right?
• 52:56
  You were expecting this, but then the composer gave you
• 52:59
  something else and. Amazing.
• 53:01
  Without that ability, music couldn't have a narrative.
• 53:06
  Wow, wow. So you know what it feels like
• 53:10
  That feels like we're like, it almost feels like how when you
• 53:13
  start typing an e-mail and then and then you start typing in
• 53:17
  words and then and then your e-mail guesses the rest of your
• 53:19
  sentence for you. Because like, it already knows
• 53:21
  there's a certain amount of like if you begin, I hope you're
• 53:24
  doing, there's only a couple other words that it could fill
• 53:26
  in. Yeah.
• 53:27
  At the end of that, it'd be, well, I hope you're doing.
• 53:30
  That's it. Like, well, or I hope you're
• 53:32
  having a good day, you know, But like, there'd be particular
• 53:35
  phrases that only make sense. Yes.
• 53:38
  But I guess what you're saying is that this seems to be also
• 53:41
  wired in, or that our brain is making the is is is
• 53:47
  understanding the story far better than we consciously
• 53:51
  realized. Yes, it's, it's automatically
• 53:53
  doing that mathematical calculation.
• 53:55
  So think, think of the C's. So here's where the C's fall in
• 53:58
  the harmonic series. So you play the first note, then
• 54:02
  you go an octave up. So that's number two.
• 54:05
  Then you go an octave up from there, and that's number four.
• 54:08
  Then you go an octave up from there, and it's #8 An octave up
• 54:12
  from there, it's #16 So the C's are the binary series, right?
• 54:18
  So that's exactly what's powering the computers that
• 54:22
  we're using to have this conversation, right?
• 54:24
  That binary series sits at the heart of, of computing.
• 54:28
  It also sits at the basis of life itself.
• 54:32
  So when, when a sperm meets an egg, it, it divides into two and
• 54:37
  then those twos divide into four and then the four becomes 8 and
• 54:40
  so on. So it's very mysterious that
• 54:43
  this map is built in there, that the binary series is kind of
• 54:47
  hard wired into our brains like that.
• 54:50
  And we can supply. So when we have a, you know, an
• 54:55
  asymmetrical waveform, our brain says, you know, if you go down
• 54:59
  to this note now you'll now we'll be in symmetry.
• 55:02
  So it's like our brain is, is it wants to have symmetry and order
• 55:07
  and it doesn't like the asymmetry and and chaos and it
• 55:10
  does it automatically. No matter you don't have a
• 55:13
  choice about this. If you're listening to music,
• 55:15
  this is what's This is what's moving you, whether you know it
• 55:18
  or not. Wow, wow.
• 55:21
  Really, really cool. Really crazy.
• 55:24
  It's freaky, isn't it? Yeah, because it it gets to,
• 55:28
  it's not, you know, and it shouldn't really be too much of
• 55:30
  a surprise to me because there's traits that I feel are generally
• 55:37
  that go well with music. And a lot of people are
• 55:40
  scientists or mathematicians that are great, that are great
• 55:43
  musicians too. And they it almost feels like
• 55:53
  music is mathematical, music is technical, music is scientific
• 55:58
  in this sense that there really is a there almost is like a
• 56:05
  object objectivity to what's right or wrong about the way
• 56:08
  that music interacts with each with one another the same way
• 56:13
  that numbers interact with one another, or the same way that
• 56:15
  words interact or letters interact with one another.
• 56:18
  There seems to be this inherent set of rules that it's almost
• 56:24
  built into this. It's almost It's scientific,
• 56:28
  isn't it? Yeah, it absolutely is.
• 56:30
  I think you're hearing it right there.
• 56:32
  The reason that you could sing that note is not, it's not a
• 56:36
  cultural thing. It's not like we've learned how
• 56:39
  to do that. That is hardwired into our
• 56:42
  brains to, to be able to predict and expect a resolution to the,
• 56:49
  to the asymmetrical waveforms that are being played.
• 56:51
  And again, that's, that's what gives music it's narrative,
• 56:55
  narrative ability. So here's another funny example.
• 56:58
  So when you're in your car and someone, someone cuts you off,
• 57:02
  you hit the horn, right? So you're, what you're doing is
• 57:06
  you're sending over a bunch of complex waveforms that that
• 57:09
  person's that's going to annoy the other driver, right?
• 57:13
  You don't, you don't send over a major chord and say, please
• 57:16
  don't cut me off, right? I mean, it's just funny how this
• 57:21
  is so embedded in in what we do, but hardly anyone knows about
• 57:26
  this. Even musicians don't know how
• 57:28
  this stuff works because no one really talks about it.
• 57:31
  So crazy. I'm sure that's why sirens were
• 57:34
  so effective too. Wow, wow, so cool.
• 57:40
  Yeah, so cool. You don't want the siren playing
• 57:42
  a Beethoven Sonata, right? Right.
• 57:45
  You want something that's going to kind of annoy and maybe
• 57:48
  frighten a little bit, and that's what it's designed for.
• 57:51
  And what it's doing to achieve that is using asymmetrical
• 57:56
  waveforms to to grab your attention.
• 58:00
  And there's no solution for it either, right?
• 58:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinating.
• 58:05
  Really cool. It's really cool.
• 58:07
  It really is. It's, it's incredible.
• 58:09
  I wonder if the people that developed that were conscious of
• 58:13
  that or it was just a reflex, like, hey, you know, we should
• 58:16
  take a really alarming sounding noise or really upset, you know,
• 58:20
  something that really sets people on edge whether they're
• 58:23
  familiar with this theory. Either way, what can you tell
• 58:26
  me? So, you know, we're actually
• 58:29
  going through your life a little bit.
• 58:30
  And so you're mentioning that you around 2728 years old, you
• 58:34
  decided you don't want to do this for the rest of your life
• 58:37
  and you decided to kind of go into academia a little bit more.
• 58:41
  I have a couple of questions about that particular junction
• 58:43
  #1 why did you feel like you like, what about the lifestyle
• 58:49
  other than because I'm sure that I know that you said, you
• 58:51
  mentioned earlier that it was strange to be playing when
• 58:54
  everyone's relaxing or be working nights and sleeping
• 58:56
  during the day. But I'm sure that there was like
• 58:59
  musicians are community at the end of the day.
• 59:00
  I'm sure that a lot of people there in your life were kind of
• 59:02
  in a similar schedule or similar, you know, so I'm sure
• 59:06
  that you weren't deprived of social life or friends or people
• 59:10
  on a schedule. What is, is it that travelling
• 59:14
  that not that knocks you out? Is it the instability that, that
• 59:17
  that makes you feel like, hey, I don't want this?
• 59:20
  Or did you just kind of go out of it?
• 59:21
  Like what, what was that like? I, I think part of it was that I
• 59:23
  was, you know, in order to. Make a living.
• 59:26
  There's very few musicians who are doing concerts for a living,
• 59:29
  right? It's only the very top tier that
• 59:31
  are doing, you know, they're playing at Carnegie Hall or
• 59:35
  whatever and making enough money to have to make a good living.
• 59:38
  So the rest of us are doing weddings, parties, you know,
• 59:43
  church gigs, our mitzvahs. We're doing all kinds of gig
• 59:47
  work. And when you're doing that,
• 59:49
  you're not really scratching that creative itch.
• 59:53
  And it was, you know, but there's a lot of money to be
• 59:56
  made doing that stuff that that's so it's, it's quite
• 59:59
  attractive. So it, it was really that, that
• 1:00:01
  I just, I didn't want to be, be playing cover tunes at weddings
• 1:00:04
  anymore either. And I thought, if I go into
• 1:00:07
  academia, I'll be doing, I'll still be playing, but I'll be
• 1:00:10
  doing concerts, not, not cover tunes and, and kind of piercing
• 1:00:14
  a living together doing that other stuff.
• 1:00:16
  So that was a big part of it. Gotcha.
• 1:00:19
  And and so when so when you decided to do that?
• 1:00:21
  What did you what did you study in?
• 1:00:22
  How did you and, and how did you fit music?
• 1:00:25
  How did you decide what you're going to, what you were going to
• 1:00:27
  study? Because did you approach this?
• 1:00:30
  I want to just do what I want and see what fascinates me.
• 1:00:33
  Or did you approach it how, what's the best way to kind of
• 1:00:35
  make a living after and, and, and stay in the industry?
• 1:00:38
  Well, I, I, you know, I didn't go into it.
• 1:00:41
  Without thinking it through quite a bit.
• 1:00:43
  And I, I looked at, on the advice of some, some friends
• 1:00:47
  too, I looked at the demographics of the university
• 1:00:51
  and after the 60s or in the 60s, seventies, there were a lot of
• 1:00:55
  university professors hired, like a lot, thousands and
• 1:00:59
  thousands. It really expanded.
• 1:01:01
  And during that time, jazz programs started to show up in
• 1:01:04
  universities as well. So what, that, what I was kind
• 1:01:08
  of betting on was by the mid 90s, a lot of those people are
• 1:01:13
  going to be retiring and there's going to be a lot of jobs open.
• 1:01:16
  And it turned out I was right. There were a lot of jobs open
• 1:01:19
  and, and so I, it was, it was a good time for me to do that.
• 1:01:23
  I probably wouldn't say that now as universities are kind of
• 1:01:25
  contracting, you know, because of, again, student demographics.
• 1:01:30
  But at that, at that point, I thought, you know, I think
• 1:01:32
  that'd be a good, good way for me to, to focus my work on
• 1:01:37
  creative work rather than gig work.
• 1:01:40
  And, and I always, again, I always had a, a very academic
• 1:01:43
  kind of intellectual bent. You know, I, I, I was reading
• 1:01:47
  stuff that I probably didn't understand when I was a teenager
• 1:01:50
  just because I thought it was cool.
• 1:01:52
  You know, I, I just had that, that side of me was there.
• 1:01:55
  So I was really happy to get get into that in, in college.
• 1:01:59
  So I, I really enjoyed that. And how much of how much of the
• 1:02:03
  education. Was classroom setting versus
• 1:02:06
  musical. Musical setting, You know, in
• 1:02:09
  the in the States in general. There's the the bachelor or the
• 1:02:14
  Masters and doctoral programs do have a lot of coursework.
• 1:02:18
  So yeah, there's a lot of coursework.
• 1:02:20
  Whereas and what kind, what kind of classes do they make you
• 1:02:22
  take? Oh, you take history.
• 1:02:23
  Classes. Theory classes.
• 1:02:26
  In my doctoral work, there was a class on how to teach music
• 1:02:30
  theory because a lot of people will be teaching music theory in
• 1:02:33
  college. So stuff like that, but, but you
• 1:02:36
  know, fairly high level stuff, but but you're still doing a lot
• 1:02:39
  of classes. So I taught in Austria as well.
• 1:02:43
  And when I was there, I started looking at the programs in
• 1:02:46
  Europe and some of them are basically like the at the whole
• 1:02:51
  show for music in Cologne, which is the big one of the big music
• 1:02:54
  conservatories. They basically just say take
• 1:02:57
  these two courses and then tell us what whatever else you want
• 1:03:01
  to do. So it's very hands off compared
• 1:03:04
  to here. So here that that kind of
• 1:03:05
  bachelor's model has crept up and and remained in the master's
• 1:03:10
  and doctoral degree, at least in at least in music from my
• 1:03:12
  experience. Sure, sure.
• 1:03:14
  It kind of it also I, I I think it.
• 1:03:16
  Goes with a certain type of societal style.
• 1:03:26
  I would call it you know where. I think that the United States
• 1:03:30
  in particular, especially from the 60s to the 90s, was very
• 1:03:33
  institutionalized. And I think that there was a lot
• 1:03:35
  of emphasis on institutional hierarchy and that, you know,
• 1:03:39
  the people that are teaching you are the real greats.
• 1:03:41
  And there's then there's the other culture, which would be a
• 1:03:44
  little bit more innovative and more we're here to which we
• 1:03:47
  believe in you and we will and we want you to practice and
• 1:03:52
  create and we will support what you create over here.
• 1:03:55
  And we kind of just want to let you guide.
• 1:03:58
  Yeah, I guess it feels a little more like jazz in that kind of
• 1:04:01
  sense, right, where you're going to be, where you're going to.
• 1:04:03
  It's a little bit more free play, a little bit more
• 1:04:05
  disorganized. Yeah.
• 1:04:07
  And that's that's really what I found when I.
• 1:04:09
  When I taught in Europe, the flip side of that is that the
• 1:04:12
  standards for entrance are impossibly high.
• 1:04:15
  So where in Europe to get into those music programs?
• 1:04:19
  So I yeah, I was on a Fulbright in.
• 1:04:23
  In. Austria and the class I taught
• 1:04:26
  at the University of the Performing Arts in Graz, where
• 1:04:28
  Schwarzenegger is from, it was a first year jazz theory class.
• 1:04:33
  So I did my normal spiel, which is I come in and I start
• 1:04:36
  playing, OK, let's see where their ears are at.
• 1:04:39
  I start playing simple intervals and there and the students were
• 1:04:41
  looking at me like what? Why are you doing this?
• 1:04:45
  I, I kept going and by the end of it, I realized that these 19
• 1:04:49
  year old students, freshmen were at the level of masters and
• 1:04:53
  doctoral students here in the States.
• 1:04:56
  Wow. So it was, it was really quite
• 1:04:59
  an eye opener. And then half of them, half of
• 1:05:01
  them were not from Austria. So I asked at the end of the
• 1:05:05
  first class, I said, so what's the out of state, out of country
• 1:05:08
  tuition here? And they all just looked at me
• 1:05:10
  like, what's this guy talking about?
• 1:05:12
  Eventually someone said, oh, I know what he's asking.
• 1:05:15
  They said, oh, if if you're not from Austria, you have to pay an
• 1:05:18
  $800 a year administrative fee. There's no other tuition.
• 1:05:25
  Yeah, imagine that. Yeah, imagine.
• 1:05:28
  That imagine that yeah. But the well, I I don't have as
• 1:05:32
  much of A. Problem with that if the
• 1:05:33
  yardstick. Is going to be as high as as as
• 1:05:36
  what, as what you're describing it.
• 1:05:38
  Meaning if for the people that are the levels of master's PhD
• 1:05:42
  students while they're freshmen, while they're 1819 years old,
• 1:05:46
  they're obviously that's not every time Dick and Harry and
• 1:05:50
  obviously these are the the, the, you know the bet the best
• 1:05:52
  and brightest. And I I think that, you know, at
• 1:05:55
  that point, money should not be an object to allowing these
• 1:05:59
  people to create and get an opportunity to create.
• 1:06:01
  Yeah, I totally agree the difference.
• 1:06:04
  Here is that in Austria at the time, there were five state
• 1:06:08
  funded schools where you could get a music degree in in
• 1:06:12
  Michigan, which is roughly the same population there at the
• 1:06:15
  time. I think they were 32.
• 1:06:17
  Wow. So, so there's where, you know,
• 1:06:19
  the state, Austria can fund five schools very well and they
• 1:06:24
  don't, they're not requiring student tuition to make it work.
• 1:06:27
  Whereas here with there's 32 schools, you can imagine, well
• 1:06:31
  now everybody is fighting for students and we need the tuition
• 1:06:34
  to come in. So it's very different.
• 1:06:37
  And that reflects in the standards because you can
• 1:06:39
  imagine if there's only 5, your standards can be very, very
• 1:06:43
  high. But if there's 32 and you all
• 1:06:44
  need to have so many students to make the tuition work, then the
• 1:06:48
  standards clearly have to go down totally and on a.
• 1:06:53
  Completely apolitical level because you know, I just just
• 1:06:58
  thinking as a thought experiment, if the if the states
• 1:07:01
  were run more like individual countries as opposed to a larger
• 1:07:04
  federal government overseeing the tuition system or the
• 1:07:08
  education system as a whole, then you could have more
• 1:07:11
  opportunities for programs like like Austria.
• 1:07:14
  If it was, if, if everything was a little bit more hands off, I
• 1:07:17
  would imagine from Big Brother and you know, again, you know,
• 1:07:21
  person, obviously there's a lot more pros and cons that have to
• 1:07:24
  be decided other than what music class music schools are going to
• 1:07:27
  get funding or not, or what degree of students or what type
• 1:07:30
  of students are going there. But it is I, I, I, I do think
• 1:07:34
  quite a bit because I have been thinking or learning more just
• 1:07:37
  about different industries within the country.
• 1:07:39
  And I have noticed that one of the big detriments to almost
• 1:07:42
  everyone is how enormous America is and, and, and ways to package
• 1:07:48
  things to reach everyone all the time, especially physical
• 1:07:52
  products. It's very, very difficult to do.
• 1:07:54
  And so it almost, you know, like for Dunkin' Donuts to.
• 1:07:59
  Be able to have a doughnut you. Know the same doughnut recipe
• 1:08:02
  and the same doughnut in Nebraska or in Hawaii or in Ohio
• 1:08:06
  or in New York or in Florida. You got to be able to, you're
• 1:08:09
  going to, you're going to have to compromise somewhere if it's
• 1:08:11
  going to be the same thing all over the place, covering this
• 1:08:14
  enormous stretch of land. And if everything's kind of
• 1:08:17
  compartmentalized a little bit more than it could probably, it
• 1:08:19
  would probably raise the quality in some kind of sense.
• 1:08:22
  And I'm sure that's the benefit that they have.
• 1:08:24
  Yeah, I I think part of it is the accreditation.
• 1:08:26
  Too that that US schools are so tied to these accrediting
• 1:08:31
  agencies and then there's funding attached to that.
• 1:08:35
  So there's this huge bureaucracy as you go up.
• 1:08:38
  Whereas in Europe they they have that too.
• 1:08:41
  But it's, it seems to be much more flexible.
• 1:08:43
  So I would like to see schools doing what jazz musicians do is,
• 1:08:48
  you know, focus on on what you're really good at.
• 1:08:51
  Don't try to be a copy of the same school that's 30 miles down
• 1:08:54
  the road. So that accreditation system
• 1:08:58
  tends to homogenize. That's really interesting.
• 1:09:02
  That's too. So kind of like the doughnut?
• 1:09:03
  You know, if you go to school. If you do a a degree in
• 1:09:06
  Kalamazoo and you do a degree in San Francisco in, in music,
• 1:09:12
  there's there's they're going to be very similar because they
• 1:09:14
  both are have to be accredited schools and that's tied to
• 1:09:18
  federal funding and so on. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:21
  Wow, really interesting. That's also.
• 1:09:23
  Really. That's also really cool.
• 1:09:25
  Is there, is there a lot of inter, is there a lot of
• 1:09:28
  interrelationship or interlap between the the, I guess what do
• 1:09:32
  you call the educational, the, the, the scholarly community and
• 1:09:36
  the, and the players and the actual music industry as far as
• 1:09:40
  like the the, the jazz program, say where you where you were
• 1:09:42
  teaching or we went to school, were there, was there close
• 1:09:46
  links to the actual business or industry?
• 1:09:50
  Not. Not really.
• 1:09:51
  Unless. They're big name players.
• 1:09:53
  So if you, if you have a, you know, someone who's really well
• 1:09:57
  known that's teaching at a school, they're probably
• 1:10:00
  teaching there a little bit and then they're touring and then
• 1:10:03
  coming back and teaching a little bit.
• 1:10:05
  But generally, generally not, I don't think, I don't think
• 1:10:09
  there's a big, big connection there between the, the industry
• 1:10:13
  and the schools. The schools are kind of their
• 1:10:14
  own industry actually. You know, they have their own
• 1:10:16
  conferences, they have their own societies and there's a lot of,
• 1:10:21
  you know, that a lot of connections being made there,
• 1:10:24
  people booking people from other schools to do concerts here, you
• 1:10:27
  know, that kind of thing. So it's more of so it's, it's
• 1:10:31
  more, it's more of an isolated. Scene.
• 1:10:33
  Yeah. University scene, yeah.
• 1:10:36
  I'd imagine it to be useful for the students.
• 1:10:37
  Who are going to graduate? Or taking classes to learn to
• 1:10:40
  meet people you know, or to learn how to learn the ropes of
• 1:10:45
  the actual industry they're probably going to have to deal
• 1:10:47
  with in three or four years, right?
• 1:10:48
  Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, they, they're making, I
• 1:10:51
  think. Probably the biggest thing is, I
• 1:10:53
  mean, you're learning music theory, you're learning this,
• 1:10:55
  you're, you know, you're kind of being placed in the context of
• 1:10:58
  the, of the discipline that you want to engage with.
• 1:11:02
  But but a big thing is also just networking, getting to know
• 1:11:07
  other players. You know, I mean, look at Pat
• 1:11:09
  Metheny and Lyle Mays. They met at U of Miami.
• 1:11:12
  You know, look what happened. Look what happened there.
• 1:11:15
  That happens all the time as these connections are made and
• 1:11:18
  then people form groups and boom, right?
• 1:11:22
  So I would love for that, for that to happen, the connection
• 1:11:24
  to. Made people to form groups and
• 1:11:26
  then those groups are traced back to the university and
• 1:11:28
  always kind of associated back and forth.
• 1:11:30
  And so that way this you know, I, I think that there's because
• 1:11:34
  I think that so much of this is collaborative and I think that
• 1:11:36
  so much of this you listen and it could be today or even back
• 1:11:42
  in the 60s and 70s where you have a music scene and and
• 1:11:46
  musicians are just kind of just dropping in on one another and
• 1:11:49
  even if they're cross genre and even if they're cross-sectional.
• 1:11:52
  Again, the, the you mentioned to me that with the episode I did
• 1:11:55
  with Scott Baumar where he where we talked about the relationship
• 1:11:58
  between soul and between Seoul and Southern rock and that
• 1:12:02
  allowed southern rock to take on a whole nother dimension and for
• 1:12:05
  Seoul to take on a whole nother dimension that they wouldn't
• 1:12:07
  have taken ordinarily. I feel like a lot more, and I
• 1:12:09
  feel like that's typically an issue that I hope is going to be
• 1:12:14
  reformed or the process of being reformed with the universities
• 1:12:17
  is that they're so isolated that you don't get that kind of cross
• 1:12:21
  meshing of different aspects or different cultures that new
• 1:12:25
  wonderful things like that could pop up.
• 1:12:27
  Yeah. And that's so important is to
• 1:12:30
  have that. Infusion of something maybe that
• 1:12:33
  you wouldn't think would work, but it works.
• 1:12:35
  It brings a new life to the to, to jazz, for example, or to pop
• 1:12:39
  music. Like you, you put someone,
• 1:12:42
  someone in a band, in a pop band that that's from another style,
• 1:12:46
  right? A violinist maybe or something.
• 1:12:48
  It changes the flavor of the band forever.
• 1:12:51
  So I think that's really healthy.
• 1:12:52
  But you know, universities tend to resist that because of the
• 1:12:56
  homogenization. They, they tend to not want to
• 1:12:58
  try those new. I'm talking about music
• 1:13:01
  departments try new, new directions like that because
• 1:13:04
  they need their accreditation and every four or five years
• 1:13:07
  someone shows up to are you, are you following all the rules that
• 1:13:11
  you know, that kind of thing. So it, it kind of stifles what
• 1:13:15
  might organically happen otherwise.
• 1:13:18
  That's a shame. It is.
• 1:13:19
  That's a shame. That's a shame.
• 1:13:21
  That makes me so sad to think about.
• 1:13:22
  So, so when you're so when you're teaching now you're
• 1:13:24
  teaching music theory and how much time does that leave you to
• 1:13:27
  actually play or compose or how did or is that part of your
• 1:13:31
  expectation? Is that part of the research
• 1:13:33
  that or not not quote UN quote. Is that part of the research
• 1:13:35
  that you're that you're expected to do as a professor?
• 1:13:38
  Yeah. So so I stopped performing.
• 1:13:40
  About 15 years ago or so, I have a hand condition that's a
• 1:13:45
  genetic thing. And it just started.
• 1:13:48
  I just wasn't able to, to keep playing at the level that I've
• 1:13:51
  been playing at. And so I, I was commissioned by
• 1:13:55
  the Grand Rapids Symphony to arrange of all these Four
• 1:13:57
  Seasons for jazz quartet, ballet and orchestra.
• 1:14:02
  And I thought, that's a high note.
• 1:14:03
  I'm, that's going to be my last. That's going to be my last draw.
• 1:14:07
  And then I, I thought, well, what am I going to do now?
• 1:14:09
  I mean, I'm, I'm a composer too. So I kept doing that.
• 1:14:11
  But I, I, I thought, well, I'm going to, I'm, I'm going to,
• 1:14:14
  someone told me about this thing called a blog.
• 1:14:17
  So I'm going to write an article about my thoughts I have on the
• 1:14:20
  jazz industry. And within a month that I was
• 1:14:25
  quoted in the Minneapolis Times or Minneapolis Post, whatever
• 1:14:29
  the newspaper is like, like, wow, this is weird.
• 1:14:31
  How was, how did that happen? And then I just kept writing.
• 1:14:35
  And then I entered the Carnegie Arts Writer Contest.
• 1:14:40
  It was like a contest that they had and I made it up to the kind
• 1:14:44
  of the semi finals and then I got contacted by Huffington Post
• 1:14:48
  and they wanted to publish all my blog stuff.
• 1:14:52
  So this awesome. Yeah.
• 1:14:53
  So this second. Career kind of took off when
• 1:14:55
  the. Playing thing was was not
• 1:14:57
  happening. So of course that really helped
• 1:14:59
  with my school stuff because, you know, you're on you're on
• 1:15:02
  the hook for for scholarship and research and and the writing
• 1:15:06
  that I did was, you know, clearly was, was qualified as,
• 1:15:10
  as being that. And and yeah, I still, I still
• 1:15:13
  compose. I last year I wrote a 30 minute
• 1:15:16
  suite for cello ensemble. So yeah, I'm, I'm still active
• 1:15:20
  in all of those areas and I have a, another Commission now that
• 1:15:24
  to do kind of a a, a therapy linked like music for therapy.
• 1:15:31
  Yes, yes, yes. I had AI did an episode of the
• 1:15:33
  music Therapist. One of my first real episodes
• 1:15:36
  other than my friends, I was with the music therapist down at
• 1:15:40
  the University of me and she was really, really kind and really
• 1:15:43
  wonderful. But we had a whole we I mean,
• 1:15:46
  there's a lot of great work to be done with that and you could
• 1:15:48
  really have a huge impact on a lot of people.
• 1:15:50
  Yeah, I'm, I'm particularly, I'm, I'm curious how different
• 1:15:55
  genres also translate to therapy, which because I know
• 1:15:58
  that. And if you're familiar with
• 1:16:00
  Andrew Huberman of the podcasting podcasting fame and
• 1:16:04
  Stanford fame, I guess, but he he did a whole episode on music
• 1:16:10
  with emotions and how listen, if you're feeling down to listen to
• 1:16:13
  sadder, slower music helps you work your way through the
• 1:16:17
  emotion as opposed to upbeat music, trying to force yourself
• 1:16:21
  to change genres, so to speak, in your in your emotional state,
• 1:16:25
  in your emotional well-being. And I found that to be the case
• 1:16:27
  for myself for sure. Yeah, there have been a lot of
• 1:16:30
  studies done on that. There was.
• 1:16:31
  One that I, I always brought to my classes on like heavy metal
• 1:16:35
  music and, and how you know how the that that they use that
• 1:16:41
  aggression and violence in the music as a cathartic means to
• 1:16:46
  get that out of them. People are so nice if you meet
• 1:16:50
  them outside of the. Outside of singing, when they're
• 1:16:53
  not screaming, they're the nicest people in the world.
• 1:16:55
  So funny. Wow.
• 1:16:58
  Yeah, that's so interesting. So that that that, that that's
• 1:17:03
  like a release. That's a wow, that's so funny
• 1:17:07
  because you always notice there. Always is.
• 1:17:09
  There's people that I'll meet and there's heavy metal types
• 1:17:13
  and then there are people that I meet and I'll talk to them for a
• 1:17:15
  couple of minutes and they're very emotionally in tune and
• 1:17:18
  they're very eloquent about their, that, you know, their,
• 1:17:20
  their, their emotional state. And then I say, what kind of
• 1:17:23
  music do you listen to? And they'll almost always throw
• 1:17:26
  in, you know, whether it is, whether it's the main thing or
• 1:17:30
  it came third, 4th or 5th, but they'll always throw in heavy
• 1:17:32
  metal at some point. They'll say real heavy metal and
• 1:17:35
  they say it is so excellent for, you know, for life, for getting
• 1:17:41
  through your emotions. I relate to that kind of because
• 1:17:45
  the. Springsteen.
• 1:17:46
  Howl is what saved my early 20s, I think.
• 1:17:49
  So what allowed me to get through all the all the pain of
• 1:17:53
  my early 20s was was was the Springsteen howl and his live
• 1:17:57
  performances. Because there's something so
• 1:17:59
  primal and so primitive and so guttural that, that you just
• 1:18:03
  feel I, I'm releasing all this, whatever this is inside of me.
• 1:18:09
  And, and a lot of times it is not tangible.
• 1:18:11
  And a lot of times words aren't going to get it out of you even
• 1:18:15
  if you try. And sometimes it has to go to a
• 1:18:17
  deeper, more primal level than that, right.
• 1:18:20
  And and when you think about it, the the.
• 1:18:22
  Reason that works is because the rhythm and the, and the gestures
• 1:18:27
  in that music are so aggressive and so forceful and we are
• 1:18:32
  mimetic beings when we, when we hear that our body mimics it
• 1:18:37
  and, and lets that out. So it's all again, it's like a
• 1:18:40
  release or a catharsis rather than, rather than something that
• 1:18:44
  is increasing aggression and increasing violence.
• 1:18:47
  It's it's kind of letting it out in a safe, controlled space.
• 1:18:52
  So cool, so cool, so cool. And what do you, what do you
• 1:18:55
  think about the Oh, actually, I do want to ask you about
• 1:18:57
  composing more because composing.
• 1:18:59
  So even though you quit playing composing, you don't need a play
• 1:19:02
  to do to compose. I still play a little bit, you
• 1:19:05
  know, I, I just couldn't perform.
• 1:19:07
  Concert level kind of stuff. So when I compose what I do.
• 1:19:11
  Is I I. Improvise.
• 1:19:13
  I just Yeah. And I, when I find something
• 1:19:15
  that I like, then I write it down and then, then I say, well,
• 1:19:20
  what, what kind of a company that can go with that?
• 1:19:23
  And then I'm just like I, like I said earlier, just using my
• 1:19:25
  ears, using my imagination to say what, what belongs there.
• 1:19:30
  And then when I find something that works, it's, it's like I've
• 1:19:33
  found what was already there in, in a certain sense, but it, it,
• 1:19:37
  what was already there in my head, not necessarily out there.
• 1:19:41
  It's just to me, this sounds good.
• 1:19:44
  And that that's kind of how it works.
• 1:19:47
  So you know what, maybe you could help me with this because
• 1:19:49
  I. Was even thinking about this
• 1:19:50
  until right now when you said it, but I've always had a hard
• 1:19:55
  time coming up with melodies and I don't know whether it's
• 1:19:58
  because I'm using a guitar or not.
• 1:20:00
  And I think I suspect that it might be because I have no
• 1:20:02
  problem finding a a nice chord progression that I like.
• 1:20:06
  I have a very difficult time coming up with a melody and I
• 1:20:09
  will try to riff and play around with the guitar and and play
• 1:20:13
  within different keys to try to find something.
• 1:20:16
  But I have a very difficult time with that.
• 1:20:18
  You think a piano would be easier for me to because I know
• 1:20:20
  that a lot of the great songs even that are translated to
• 1:20:23
  guitar, a lot of the great melodies and great songs were
• 1:20:26
  written, especially in the rock world, were written on piano and
• 1:20:29
  then translated over. Because because the authors
• 1:20:32
  usually say Bob Dylan would say the same thing.
• 1:20:34
  Springsteen says it that The Beatles certainly say that that
• 1:20:38
  that the piano gives you a lot more freedom to explore
• 1:20:41
  different melodies. How would you recommend going
• 1:20:45
  about finding or creating one? I would recommend singing.
• 1:20:50
  So, yeah, just find all, find the melodies that the the tunes
• 1:20:55
  that you really like, sing along with them and then find the
• 1:20:59
  notes on the piano and say, oh, and and don't expect anything
• 1:21:02
  other than that. Just say, oh, I love this Bob
• 1:21:04
  Dylan tune. I'm going to sing along with it.
• 1:21:07
  And once I once you kind of know it well then go to the piano and
• 1:21:10
  find out what the notes are like.
• 1:21:13
  Maybe write that melody out and then do it with another one, and
• 1:21:16
  then do that with another one. And you're basically
• 1:21:19
  transcribing, but you're also internalizing it by singing it
• 1:21:23
  yourself. So let's say you do that 20
• 1:21:25
  times. Now you've got a list of now
• 1:21:28
  you've got a manuscript with 20 different melodies in it.
• 1:21:32
  OK, now let's go back in and say what do they all have in common?
• 1:21:36
  Like what? What is it that makes a good
• 1:21:37
  melody? And you'll start to see the
• 1:21:40
  patterns there, that melodies mostly move by step.
• 1:21:45
  They are probably 70 percent, 80% step, 20% leap to another
• 1:21:50
  note. And when they leap, they usually
• 1:21:53
  will drop down one note or maybe go up one note from the leap and
• 1:21:57
  start the start the the stepwise motion again.
• 1:22:01
  Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that I think sure.
• 1:22:04
  I think on the piano that. You can have a really good
• 1:22:06
  visual for that. I think that's what the piano
• 1:22:08
  gives you that the guitar doesn't like.
• 1:22:10
  Guitar for me is, is like Mars. It's just mysterious, far away.
• 1:22:16
  I don't know what they're doing. I don't know how they're
• 1:22:18
  thinking of the notes. Piano to me is OK.
• 1:22:20
  I can see everything, see everything right here and, and,
• 1:22:24
  and I think that that helps. So you recommend listen to a
• 1:22:29
  couple of songs? Find the melody on the song.
• 1:22:33
  So for example, if I was listening to Brown Eyed Girl and
• 1:22:35
  I, I, I, I learned how to find the transcribe what those notes
• 1:22:44
  are. I'm trying to play that out loud
• 1:22:46
  so it doesn't you don't have to depend on my voice.
• 1:22:48
  Do you know brown eyed Girl? Let's see.
• 1:22:55
  Wait, what's the next one? I don't.
• 1:22:59
  I know the right.
• 1:23:15
  There it is. That's right.
• 1:23:16
  Right. Yeah, I'm remembering it now.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah. There you go.
• 1:23:19
  So I would write down what those.
• 1:23:21
  Individual notes that I was playing were Yep, and then.
• 1:23:26
  And then what then? Do then.
• 1:23:28
  So now it's in your head, in a different.
• 1:23:30
  Way you've kind of you've written it out, it's almost like
• 1:23:33
  you've, you have a paper to write and you've got the ideas.
• 1:23:35
  But once you write the opening paragraph to the paper, it
• 1:23:38
  sticks in a different way. So once you've written that out,
• 1:23:42
  it's it's, you know it in a, in a more internalized way.
• 1:23:47
  So then you look at it, you say, OK, brown eyed girl.
• 1:23:49
  So the first 3 notes are steps. So that's up a step, up a step,
• 1:23:56
  down a step, down a step, and then a jump.
• 1:24:00
  And it's repeating the same pattern as the first part and
• 1:24:04
  then it repeats the first part. OK, so even if you just.
• 1:24:11
  Leave it at that. You say, OK, it's, it's it took
• 1:24:15
  the first pattern, it jumped up 4 notes and repeated it, and
• 1:24:18
  then it jumped back to the first pattern and ended it by jumping
• 1:24:21
  down one note. Yeah.
• 1:24:24
  OK. That's, that's good for me to
• 1:24:26
  know for structuring my own. Yeah.
• 1:24:28
  Melody now, yeah, so gotcha. So what if you?
• 1:24:31
  What if you took that? And said, well, I'm going to try
• 1:24:33
  that. I'm going to try that at a
• 1:24:35
  different tempo and starting on a different note.
• 1:24:38
  So you go. So I played it slowly, I copied
• 1:24:59
  one of them, but I also changed it a little bit in there and you
• 1:25:03
  never would have known. That's brown eyed girl.
• 1:25:05
  Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:07
  Then. Try it in a minor.
• 1:25:09
  Key. Now it's now it's a sad eyed
• 1:25:21
  girl now. Yeah.
• 1:25:22
  Haunted Mansion. Now it's Haunted Mansion.
• 1:25:24
  In Disney World is what it sounds like.
• 1:25:26
  I love that. That's really cool when you're
• 1:25:29
  composing. I know that when you're
• 1:25:30
  songwriting, there's generally a structure, you know, lyrics,
• 1:25:34
  chorus, lyrics or verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and maybe
• 1:25:38
  occasionally a bridge. When you're composing, are you
• 1:25:42
  limited to that structure or can you kind of structure the music
• 1:25:45
  that you're arranging however you want?
• 1:25:47
  Well, I structure it however I want, but.
• 1:25:50
  You know, I'm informed by all my classical studies.
• 1:25:52
  I mean, I'm like I was a classical pianist.
• 1:25:54
  I studied classical piano at the doctoral level as well.
• 1:25:57
  So there are forms there, but they're much more flexible than
• 1:26:00
  pop music form. So you can look at Sonata form,
• 1:26:04
  for example, which you can look at a Beethoven Sonata, you can
• 1:26:07
  look at a Mozart Sonata. They all use the same form, but
• 1:26:10
  they're entirely different creatures.
• 1:26:12
  So they have certain characteristics that are the
• 1:26:14
  same, but you would never say, oh, this is a verse, chorus,
• 1:26:17
  verse, chorus. So so when I compose my
• 1:26:20
  classical music, I'm aware of all that.
• 1:26:23
  So my pieces do have form, but it's much more flexible because
• 1:26:27
  in pop music you kind of have to do that because if you go
• 1:26:30
  outside of that, it's no longer pop music.
• 1:26:33
  Yeah. It's, it's too complicated,
• 1:26:35
  right. All of a sudden it's Pink Floyd
• 1:26:37
  or it's Genesis or it's yes or something.
• 1:26:40
  And, and it's not, you know, it's not pop music anymore.
• 1:26:44
  Yeah. Which is more fun for you to
• 1:26:45
  compose? I really like classical
• 1:26:49
  composition. I, I, that's what I've done the
• 1:26:51
  most of. I I just find it really
• 1:26:54
  scratches that creative itch in a different way because I, I'm,
• 1:26:58
  I'm not improvised. I'm improvising it when I'm
• 1:27:00
  doing it, but then it's going down on paper.
• 1:27:02
  So then it becomes permanent. Umm, yeah.
• 1:27:04
  I really like that. It's so when I was writing this
• 1:27:07
  cello piece, I, you know, I have my kind of routine.
• 1:27:09
  I start writing at about 11 and it sometimes I would just be
• 1:27:14
  down here writing and all of a sudden my wife would call up,
• 1:27:16
  hey, it's 5:00, it's time for dinner.
• 1:27:19
  No way. Yeah, where I'm like, what, what
• 1:27:20
  time is it? Because I just get.
• 1:27:21
  Lost in it, you know that's. Amazing.
• 1:27:24
  It's fun. It's really fun.
• 1:27:26
  Wow, it's so. Cool, I love to get it I.
• 1:27:28
  There's not that many activities that I think that that I could
• 1:27:31
  engage in where time kind of goes by like that.
• 1:27:34
  And it's, I think it takes a certain level of proficiency.
• 1:27:37
  And again, that kind of zone where your, your conscious, your
• 1:27:41
  intentional mind is off and your creative mind is in full flow.
• 1:27:45
  Yeah. And it to me it, it almost feels
• 1:27:47
  like I'm, I'm a kid. I'm just, I, I feel like I'm
• 1:27:50
  having this adventure where I'm just, but I'm writing music and
• 1:27:54
  I'm always thinking, oh, I could do this and I could do that.
• 1:27:57
  And then all of a sudden 3456 hours go by and I'm, I'm
• 1:28:01
  entirely unaware. It's crazy.
• 1:28:03
  You change. Do you change the way that you
• 1:28:05
  write if you know it's going to be?
• 1:28:06
  Played with a big band or a small band?
• 1:28:08
  Oh, for sure. Yeah.
• 1:28:10
  Yeah. You really?
• 1:28:11
  Have to zone in on on who the ensemble is, what the
• 1:28:15
  instruments are, because each instrument has different
• 1:28:17
  strengths and weaknesses. You can't just take what you
• 1:28:20
  can't just take what you play on a piano and say hey, hey, cello
• 1:28:23
  player play this it you know it doesn't work.
• 1:28:26
  Same with guitar, right? You, you have to, you have to
• 1:28:29
  know how the instrument works to some degree, right?
• 1:28:32
  To what? What the player is going to
• 1:28:35
  enjoy playing hopefully and have fun playing.
• 1:28:38
  That means you'll get more performances, hopefully.
• 1:28:40
  Did that. So did that limit you to the
• 1:28:42
  instruments that you're willing to put into?
• 1:28:43
  Your composition that you want to be playing your compositions
• 1:28:47
  it it does a little bit, but you know as someone with a.
• 1:28:50
  Doctorate in composition. I studied all of the
• 1:28:53
  instruments, so I, I'm, I'm kind of aware of what they, you know,
• 1:28:57
  how they all work. So, yeah, it, you're limited
• 1:29:01
  there a little bit. I mean, I like writing for
• 1:29:03
  strings and I like writing for, for piano and brass.
• 1:29:06
  Yeah. Written a lot for brass.
• 1:29:07
  This is fun. Yeah.
• 1:29:08
  Brass is fun. Brass is really cool.
• 1:29:11
  There's a great band called the Tedeschi Trucks Band.
• 1:29:13
  I don't know if you know them. No, I don't.
• 1:29:15
  Oh, they're great. So Derek Trucks was the drummer
• 1:29:19
  for The Allman Brothers Nephew and started playing
• 1:29:24
  professionally, started showing up with them professionally with
• 1:29:27
  The Allman Brothers at like 11 or 12.
• 1:29:30
  There's an amazing video on YouTube that you can look up if
• 1:29:34
  you Google and I'll send you the link. 13 year old Derek Trucks
• 1:29:37
  playing Layla by and and he's a 13 year old kid and he plays
• 1:29:43
  slide guitar and he's just in this zone and but his but his
• 1:29:47
  band, which has the Southern rock roots, has a full awesome
• 1:29:53
  horn section and the brass section.
• 1:29:57
  I think Springsteen also did this in recent years he's been
• 1:30:00
  traveling with a whole horn section.
• 1:30:02
  It just changes everything. It's so it's so much fun.
• 1:30:06
  It's so cool. And I imagine, do you try to do
• 1:30:10
  you try to like link together weird instruments, like do you
• 1:30:14
  try to throw an accordion somewhere or I mean, you know,
• 1:30:16
  do you throw in random instruments with other types of
• 1:30:19
  instruments that don't typically ever go together or is that more
• 1:30:22
  difficult to write for? I have done that in in my kind
• 1:30:25
  of jazz. World.
• 1:30:26
  So I have a recording out with a shakahachi flute.
• 1:30:30
  A good friend of mine from Detroit who who play he's a.
• 1:30:33
  He's a jazz. Sax player, but he's also an
• 1:30:35
  excellent shakahachi flute player.
• 1:30:37
  And so the music, you know, shakahachi is not a fully
• 1:30:40
  chromatic instrument, right? It's it, there's only so many
• 1:30:44
  notes you can play on it. You have to bend to get some of
• 1:30:46
  the other pitches. But it worked.
• 1:30:48
  It worked really great. I'll send you a link if you
• 1:30:50
  want, if you want to listen to some of that.
• 1:30:52
  I love that stuff. I love that stuff.
• 1:30:55
  Yeah, the. Man, I think the accordion has
• 1:30:57
  to be my my most favorite underrated instrument because
• 1:31:02
  you can make such magnificent sounds with it.
• 1:31:03
  I had an ex-girlfriend in college who whose mom played the
• 1:31:07
  piano, but she learned vis A vis the accordion and she used to
• 1:31:11
  take out the accordion every now and then to play a couple of
• 1:31:13
  songs on it. It was so cool.
• 1:31:14
  It's so rich, such an awesome sound.
• 1:31:16
  That was my first instrument was the accordion.
• 1:31:18
  Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I just, I actually
• 1:31:21
  played it in the new music ensemble here at Grand Valley in
• 1:31:25
  some minimalist in a couple of minimalist or one minimalist
• 1:31:29
  piece. So it's kind of cool to be
• 1:31:30
  playing this with on a on a piece by Terry Riley in C and I
• 1:31:35
  was playing accordion on it. Wow.
• 1:31:37
  Yeah, somewhat fun. So.
• 1:31:39
  Cool. Anyway, we're we're at time, but
• 1:31:42
  Kurt, doctor, doctor, Kurt, thank you so much.
• 1:31:45
  This was this is such a great conversation and so much fun.
• 1:31:48
  And also congratulations on your recent retirement.
• 1:31:51
  Thank you. And I hope that you take all the
• 1:31:54
  creative time in the world to write all the great music.
• 1:31:57
  And please, whenever you come up with something cool or you need
• 1:32:00
  any kind of ears, feel free to shoot it my way because I'm
• 1:32:03
  always I've always loved to get feedback and I always love to
• 1:32:05
  hear new things. So I'm a happy, I'm a happy
• 1:32:09
  free, free listener. Awesome.
• 1:32:11
  I'll give you any feedback. Well, thanks so much for having
• 1:32:14
  me. This has been really fun.
• 1:32:16
  And time, it is a ton of fun. Thank you so much, Carl.
• 1:32:18
  We'll talk soon. Take care all.
• 1:32:19
  Right. Bye bye.