I went to see Fred, the coolest repairman on earth, in a huge hurry after I got my clarinet on Friday. It was torture staying at work all day, once I got the horn - I just wanted to sprint over there like mad thing and see if the horn I bought was any good. I mean, it looked good, but what the heck do I know? Plus of course there was no reed, so I couldn't try it anyway. But you must know to me, like most musicians, instruments themselves are one the most beautiful things made my humans, art that you can play, the form in love with the function. I have found out over the past few days that wood clarinets are made from grenadilla wood from Africa - and the dark wood is really lovely, especially when it contrasts with the nickle silver keys.
I get to the music store and I am big time excited. Fred takes the horn, runs his critical eye over it, checks it out thororughly. As it said in the ad on ebay, the horn had been totally rebuilit, new pads, new corks, oiled up, the whole business.
Finally Fred puts on a good mouthpiece and plays the heck out of it - I can tell you that unlike a lot of repairmen Fred has monster chops - and the horn, it sounds so good I am overjoyed. And I hadn't even played it yet!
Of course I had to buy some things so that I had a complete kit to play on. Fred pointed me towards a good student style mouthpiece, since he told me a pro level model would be much harder for me to learn on. How cool is that, a music store that doesn't try to sell you the most expensive thing? There was some other stuff like reeds, etc. Lets just say that with the horn and all the accessories I still spent less than $350 - for a semi-pro level clarinet! Sometimes I am just lucky!
I rushed home to show Barbara, and she was also pretty excited. Then the moment of truth, can I play the thing at all?
YES YES YES! Its close to the saxphone in some respects as far as embrosure and some of the fingering, so I was really, really happy when I started making music with this. I can learn this thing! And the tone is so wonderfully warm and woody - really wonderful to me.
Later on in the evening Barbara broke out her 'cello and we played thru a tiny exercise together, that is once I figured out the fingering, cause it is not exaclty the same as the sax by any stretch of the imagination - and this was a great thing, the first time ever we have played any music together, after all these years. And the clarinet is a real good match up with the 'cello, unlike the saxophone.
And I am still amazed on how much I don't miss writing music. I will get back to that, but for now, actually playing, as oppsed to writing on the computer, is much, much more compelling. And fun too, did I mention that?
Maybe its selfish, but with all the horror going on in the world, more than ever I need to center myself and my music. The possiblity of learning and making Jewish music is a small and personal thing to me, but isn't it also Tikkun Olan, repairing the world, by increasing the connections between people? Klezmer music certainly makes me feel more attached to my own heritage, and with some luck and hard work perhaps I can spread some of this great music myself.
I read once that Ravi Shankar's teacher told him, music is God, and while I don't know if that is true, music must certainly must put you the path. May it be so in our lifetimes.
How quickly things change, at least for me. Last time I hinted at the fact that I was really interested in learning the stand up bass. This has been a goal of mine for some time, and I have been learning about about the double bass in the past few months.
Some of what I have learned: they are really expensive. And there are only a couple of places here to look. Add to that the fact that I keep getting different information from everyone I speak to. Plus my wife, who has never, ever balked at me buying an instrument, wasn't too thrilled about this one. But don't get the wrong idea - she didn't talk me out of this, although she asked me to cool my jets a bit before I spent so much money. Nothing wrong with that idea at all, and in any event I didn't have enough cash to do an impulse buy of that magnitude.
There are other considerations too. With a bass, face it, you can only have one in a group or in a jam session really. I think I wrote that I went to a Django jam the other day, and while it was kinda fun, I got some grief because my tenor sax is, I admit it, loud . Not that I can't try and play quietly, but there is a limit to that, too quiet and it sounds like crap, so why play? At this session, and on another occasion, someone asked if I played soprano sax - good for middle eastern stuff, and I assumed quieter than my tenor.
OK, fast forward a couple of weeks and I am at the local music store, a good place where I am friends with the brass repair guy. I ask him if I can try out a soprano sax. Sure, he says, why not? So I buy a reed (yeah kids you don't want to pass these around...) go into a quiet room and play.
Most everything I had heard about sopranos was true, mostly: hard to play in tune! But no one told me how heavy they are, and most of all, how friggin' loud!!! Worse than my tenor. I gave it a good shot, but 15 minutes of playing convinced me I have zero interest in playing soprano.
On a whim I tried out a clarinet. Years back, a friend of mine leant me her second clarinet, but even tho I had been playing sax for years at that point, I couldn't make a sound out of it, not one peep! Drove me nuts, but I said, what the hell, I guess I don't need to play clarinet then.
I mentioned this to my friend at the store, and he said, can' t be right, here try one out.
OK, back in the quiet room, raise the horn to my lips, and - out comes this beautiful sound. I was stunned, really. Why hadn't I been able to do this before? I played for about 20 minutes, and while you wouldn't have liked it, at least I could actually play the thing.
Much lighter and quieter than the sax. And the lower range - oh man, I think I got hooked right then.
Next day I tried another clarinet at another store. Things were getting serious at this point.
I did a lot of research on the internet, especially at sax on the web, (in the doubling forum) a good site for sax players. I found out what to look for, and went to ebay and found a completely rebuilt horn for a very reasonable price - like about 1/10 of what I would pay for a good double bass. It just arrived today in the office, and it looks good to me, but I have to run back to the music store to have my friend pass his blessing on it, plus buy a few necessary things like reeds and a good mouthpiece.
Am I excited? Yes! Impulsive? You bet, but thanks to my sweetheart I have made a much better buy. I mean, it all makes sense to me, since the clarinet is perfect for klezmer and middle eastern music and jazz too. Maybe next year at this time, if I am good enough, I will make it Klez Kanada!
Its been a few more weeks now that I have been not worrying about writing music, worried about electronic music……….damn, I feel great actually.
It has changed my habits a lot. Used to be I would read every single thing I could get my hands on regarding this or that new sequencer, or new Reaktor toy, or how to work better in the studio. Fun to play with the sounds, but maybe not that constructive. It was always, upgrade, wait for the upgrade, wait for the new killer feature, over and over. Not that it isn't lots fun but still, its way too much like work.
You can imagine that was for years, I would get home, get on the computer, and write what music I could and read tech documents about electronic music or sampling or synthesis - over and over an over. That was between wanting to kill myself if I couldnt think of anything new.
Now, I am spending a lot more of my time playing my instruments, especially my trumpet.
It all goes back to that klezmer brass stuff, like I am listening to right now – Carnival Conspiracy by the Frank London Brass all stars. This music is just so right for me now – funky, with lots of Yiddish singing, and as good a selection of musicians that you could ever ask for. And catchy too..........
I have been actually learning a piece of music off a record for the first time in many years (except for learning songs to teach students). Its a curious thing that after so many years of copping licks from guitar lessons, that I never did that much, if at all, with the sax and trumpet.
Now I find that it is really exciting to me to be able to learn these klezmer tunes, or should I say tune, since I havent even finished the first one yet. One other thing I realized is that these tunes don't have a lot of upper range playing, at least in the themes, so I can actually play them without killing my lips. Cool.
What this will do for me in the long run, I hope, will get me over the hump with feeling comfortable with the trumpet. For years I didnt even bother much with doing staccato playing on the horn, cause I know playing legato is much harder.
However, playing this klezmer stuff is all about fast repeated tounged notes. There are also lots of repeated phrases, and of course the songs are quite defined, not open ended like long improvised jazz pieces. It just feels good to my soul, learning this music.
Speaking of jazz, I actually got off my butt and played with a some folks in a jam session at a bar another night. If you knew me, you know I normally hate jam sessions, its just too much ego and not all that fun.
This was a bit different, since these people are all huge fans (well, me too) of Django Reinhardt, my own personal favorite guitarist of all time. So these folks have jam sessions based on songs that Django performed.
Its really old school, there is a bassist that actually knows all the tunes, and then a bunch of guitarists playing the Selmer style guitars that Django favored. There are also always (seen this group of people a couple of times at different places) a couple of violin players also. So, someone picks a tune, all the guitarists grab their fake charts, and off you go. Play the head, then everyone solos around the circle, play the head again and you are done. Like I said really old school. Fun too, and challenging to me since I havent practiced or anything like that.
What I did actually was to piss people off, since my tenor sax is a loud horn – it really bothered people, and I couldn't play like I normally do. Not that I want to be loud, but the horn sounds much better that way. I could investigate a quieter mouthpiece if I decide to do this again.
At the end, it was kind of fun, but do I want to do it again? I dont know. It would be easier if I had a soprano, but I am not going to run right out and buy one, just for a jam session. At the very least I showed I could play and not embarrass myself too much, and that felt good.
In my fantasy world, I would be able to hook up with a band that plays the brass music that is so captivating to me – that is, once I got my trumpet chops up or assming (more likely) I could pass myself off as a sax player. I will keep looking, but now I feel good at least that my trumpet is liking me a bit better – after all, it takes two to tango.
take me right back to the shack, jack!
The last time I wrote I was talking about playing with Ivan, and I had high hopes that would work out, but for various reasons it just did not. I did have some fun, having all this drum gear over here was great, but if the idea was to make sort of a trio with Jeff, it just did not hang together.
As far as the CD with Jeff, that is on hold also. I was feeling frustrated with the lack of progress, and also with the way we were working. Perhaps part of this is my fault, but me trying to work out things by myself and just present them to Jeff is not really a good way to work. Consider that I would write a bunch of stuff on a song, and then a week later Jeff would come over and not like any of it. Well, we are supposed to be partners in this, and I have to respect what he likes, just as he has to do with me. The rule is though we both have to like it and so with only working once a week together, that is very very tough.
This is also tied up with the things I am working with, which in large part are synth tones. If you have ever played a synth, you realize quickly that like any other instrument, what you play is determined by what the actual sound itself is like. For instance, I do not play the same kinds of melodies on my saxophone as I do on the guitar.
With the synth this is compounded by the fact that there are an endless amount of tones, depending on what type of synth you are playing. Great, fascinating, and perfect if you were either working by yourself or doing all the composing and tone shaping with another person or persons in real time.
The other part of the problem is that Jeff is way too busy with his other projects, and has not thought about playing melodically for years, at least in the sense that I am thinking of melodies, and it is difficult for him to do. In fact it took me some time to realize that I could not possibly write music without him giving me a melody to work over, since I would have nothing to build a framework around.
So for now at least it is an impossible situation. Jeff will be very busy for the summer and I do not really know if after that we will be able to make any more progress, it depends quite a lot on him.
Once I thought about this I got rather depressed for several days, which is why I did not write at the moment, for it would have served no point. I did have to wonder what I would be doing, and why should I put any more of my energy into music, since the one thing I had going was kaput. Of course, if my CD was selling at all, that would be one thing, but it is not.
Over the past several months I kept thinking that what I was missing was the interaction with other musicians. You know for the past ten years I have been writing music by my lonesome. At first, it was just wonderful, and whole new world of electronic sounds to explore, and not having to deal with flaky band mates was wonderful. Learning about and setting up a home studio has been a great learning experience too.
However at some point I began to realize that it just was not enough for me. I had already given up on the idea of playing out live by myself with my electronic stuff, it was just too complicated, or so it certainly seemed to me. In any rate, I never got very far with it.
At the same time, I have found that my interest in music has been changing, moving away from the electronic stuff to something much more acoustic, namely Klezmer/Balkan/Brass Band music. This stuff is just so alive! And being a sax and trumpet player, how could I not like it?
Also I had I guess you would say an epiphany last month. We went to see some local musicians that play Balkan music, but Barbara and I got to the club way early, and were mystified by what we saw: two talented musicians, one of whom played real vibraphone and midi vibraphone, and the other played sax, flute and electronic wind instrument. The vibe player especially was kind of amazing with what he was getting out the midi vibe, since he was triggering so many samples, but what struck us both was how cheesy it all seemed. I could tell that the percussion was triggered from some ancient Roland midi module, but still, it was not the tones so much as the inherent deadness of the beats. And we couldn’t figure out for the life of us how this could be considered Balkan music.
It wasn't until someone set down behind us in the club and the guys on stage said to him, hey why don't you bring your bass up here? – the we realized that this new musician that arrived was actually part of the band we wanted to see. We had simply come way too early and saw the wrong band.
Later when we saw the Balkan stuff it was just great, about six musicians all very talented playing the rocking Eastern European music. And not a synth in site.
It got me thinking about what I had been doing for so long. For years I lived as much as I could in the basement, mostly working by myself, although there were periods were I made this electronic music with a few other people.
All during this time, it had been based around the computer, so I would work all day on the computer, then come home and work all night on it. True, I was writing music, and it was fascinating, but it is not the same thing at all as picking up my guitar or my horns.
I realized that I am tired of writing music, of that being the driving force behind what I am doing musically. Consider that for the past two years at least, this is all I have been doing, that is it, writing music. Staring at a blank page is not all that I want to do.
So I am starting another phase in this endless obsession I have with making noise. It all fits together in my mind: my serious interest in klezmer, which ties right in with my Jewish mind, the Balkan music, which kills me with the brass, and the idea that I could have some fun again playing music instead of always being down here in the basement, worrying about the next software upgrade or how to figure out the next insane Reaktor synth that some one much brighter than I has cooked up.
I am not saying that I am through with electronic or computer based music, or with writing more material, since I will have some drones on the new Mizna (that is Jeff's group) record, and that is cool but damn, I need a break.
Now I am trying to find some people to play with, and I know there are people in this town that do the kinds of music I am interested in, I just have to find them.
And just so you know that I have not gotten over Gear Acquisition Syndrome, I have gotten completely taken up with the idea of learning the bass – I mean, the acoustic upright string bass. Maybe its time I stepped up to the bottom, ya know?