I posted on Facebook about how I found this Mathias Eick recording called The Door last week. This a fantastic recording that has kind of an odd variety of instruments being used, but what I really love is the sort of jammy feel of the electric bass guitar and the drums mixed in with trumpet… Eick’s trumpet sound is so smooth, actually lithe is a word that comes to mind, that more aptly describes his sound. The timbre of the instrument almost seems a little rough, kind of like Don Cherry or Rob Mazurek, but yet soulful and emotive.

The Door also has an impressionistic vibe that I’ve found inspiring in the way I treat guitar on some of the tracks that I’ve been working on of late. I’m working more and more to take what I consider an ECM Recordings-vibe with regard to actually composing on an instrument, say vs. a synth, and mixing it with a sort of slow contemplative vibe. I hope to publish some roughs of these experiments here on the site once I get them mixed down…

I’m back playing a lot of guitar. I’m practicing for a new group, more on that to come, and I just haven’t had much of a chance to sit at the piano. It is looking like this could be signaling a break in the piano journal.

Read this quote today, the tone is in your fingers, in the excellent 37Signals book Rework. Even as a guitar player I had never heard that, but yesterday when I was playing the piano I hit a note, and found myself rubbing the key, as if I was going to get some expression or vibrato out of the note that way. It took me a second or two to realize that unlike a guitar note on a string, there was no way that was going to happen. Since I was practicing on a synth controller I could have used the modulation or expression dial, but it was weird to me how my mind, my composing mind, tried to manipulate the sound in that way, even thought the device wasn’t set to do it that way. That realization was even more profound when I read today that the tone is in your fingers. When you’re on the guitar, violin, etc… the tone surely is in your fingers, but with a piano that’s true to much lesser extent. Interesting realization.

Probably one of the things that really got me moving towards the piano was the near-constant listening to of two ECM recordings Being There by the Tord Gustavsen Trio and January by the Marcin Wasilewski Trio. I haven’t taken the time to research much about these groups, but I believe that Tord Gustavsen is from Norway, and Marcin Wasilewski is from Poland, but housed under the ECM label they have an excellently similar, yet unique impressionistic and evocative piano style that I just find to be peaceful, sonically rich and generally music that just has a lot of space. I would love to play like them, and put into the upright bass, trap drums, format makes it even more great to listening to. There’s a lot going on, sonically, but it’s not overpowering, rather it’s understated and very, very beautiful. If either of these guys bring their crews stateside I’d definitely like to experience this live.

The piano journal that I’m posting here is my attempt to document working towards learning the piano, why it inspires me, what I hope to achieve, and to just document the undertaking. I’ve tried this many times, but compositionally and instrumentally, I just feel ready for this change now, and I’m going to give a try; this will serve to document that process. Click here to read the whole series.

Thinking this morning about the story, i.e. this blog, piano journal, poetry, life experiences, etc… the story is what’s happening while you’re thinking about writing the story. Over a year of doing this regularly and that realization just hit me. Doing it is the thing. In this case the “doing it” that I’m talking about isn’t just about the blog, or the journal, but really it’s about the exploration, the documentation and the pursuit, as Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh called it in the title of his book, Searching for the Sound – that’s the story. Whether I’m going back and forth with playing piano or thinking about how I can apply what I’m learning with piano and composition to guitar, that’s the story.

What am I thinking? Who am I kidding? Listening to Keith Jarrett for two days straight and those are the questions I keep asking myself. Who am I kidding? I had the realization that I could make a life plan to play like and improvise like Keith Jarrett and probably not reach it. Every now and then, in the cracks of the defeatist thinking, I realize that if I give up I’ll never even achieve 1/100th of what he’s managed to do, but if I keep going I might be able to achieve 1/20th or at least have my own experience and do my own thing. Of course the old thought patterns kick in and I’ve thought about just applying myself more to guitar, possibly with some of the phrasing lessons I’ve learned at the piano… truth be told, I tried it, and I just want to play the piano. Anyway, here you are with me in all of my piano trials and errors. If you haven’t listened to Keith Jarrett do yourself a favor and check out his music. Listen to his solo piano work and keep in mind that he usually improvises 100% of it on the spot. Amazing.

The piano journal that I’m posting here is my attempt to document working towards learning the piano, why it inspires me, what I hope to achieve, and to just document the undertaking. I’ve tried this many times, but compositionally and instrumentally, I just feel ready for this change now, and I’m going to give a try; this will serve to document that process. Click here to read the whole series.

Today, as I was practicing guitar for an upcoming gig I couldn’t help but think about the feeling of piano strings vibrating after being struck and the feeling of hammering down a string against the fret of the guitar and the sweet sensation of the guitar body vibrating back into my abdomen, my core – a tender and subtle feeling that harmonizes with the vibrations of my being. Piano is different, as subtle, but the vibrations settle in the air. As the chords move and the hammers strike listening and feeling are one.

Attending a conference today, I found myself walking around a large and empty convention center, stretching my legs during a break. As I  neared the back of the center I saw, what looked like a baby grand piano tucked away under a black tarp. Sure enough, it was. I walked over to it, and looked around for a stool, hoping that I might sit down and pluck out a few notes especially after my experience with the Steinway a couple nights ago. I pulled back the tarp finding a nice old baby grand, and a stool. I sat down, and opened her up, plunking down on a few keys to test the action and get an idea of whether it was in tune or not; it was.

I started off playing quietly, though, there was no one around at all. I played for about ten minutes slowly getting bolder and louder as the time passed. There was nobody around, and it was really very peaceful just playing the chords out into the open air as it echoed out through the cavernous hall. As I played, I started to think that if I did it guerilla-style, this could be a piano that I could use to document this whole thing. The location was good, all and all it was fairly accessible to the public so I could get in and out with trespassing or gaining permission, though the latter was sure to be the best route, but less fun and less risky somehow.

The fun nearly ended, though, as a security guard came walking by. He looked at me and my passionate rhythms turned to plinks and plunks as I waited to be told to move on. I fumbled through some notes and gained my composure, thinking of him as my first audience at a piano. I figured I’d get the best out of it until he came up and told me to leave, half hoping that he was enjoying what I was playing. He must have been. He smiled said hello, and kept walking, with a renewed, almost affirmed, sense of purpose I continued to play for a few more minutes.

As I sat there playing, and for a few minutes afterward, even as I write this, I like to believe that I saw the transformative side of music, the music that can bring people together, unite them, and relax them rather than separating us all from each other. I started thinking that the way that I keep stumbling upon pianos I could bring the beauty of music into the world everywhere once I get better at this instrument. It’s just that kind of simple musical power that I started this thing hoping to find and I’m finding it everywhere – It doesn’t have to just be in a concert hall, on a stage or somwehere else, it can hapen anywhere, here and now. That’s the simplicity and power of music. Awesome.

The piano journal that I’m posting here is my attempt to document working towards learning the piano, why it inspires me, what I hope to achieve, and to just document the undertaking. I’ve tried this many times, but compositionally and instrumentally, I just feel ready for this change now, and I’m going to give a try; this will serve to document that process. Click here to read the whole series.

I have to admit the frustration of playing with the stiff action and key response of my keyboard has been kind of getting to me, and making me rethink this whole think, at least that’s what I was thinking earlier today. That was before I went to my son’s recital and afterward had the chance to play on a Steinway baby grand. From the touch of the first note through a variety of the vamps I was working on I remembered what it was I trying to achieve at least when I started. Having played on a real piano thousands of times, with admittedly very few in recent years, I remembered that the keyboard here was just a proxy for when I had the chance to sit down at a real piano. Any doubts I had were washed away as the thick and rich timbre of the piano hammers striking strings vibrated in the air. Beautiful. No longer any question for me, I’m going to keep at this. Of course there will be probably fairly significant limitations with regard to trying to do live performances of this and what I set out to do, but at the very least I should be able to find some small venues witn an in-tune piano in a few major population centers like Chicago, New York, Austin, San Francisco and wherever else I may be able to line up some kind of performance.

As a side note, it was also nice to listen to some Chopin, which I’ve ever heard performed live, it’s not in recent memory. I did enjoy the rich, timbral language that Chopin employed in his exploration of the instrument and the feeling of it had more depth than many of the light and airy recordings of Chopin’s works that I’ve listened to through the years. If you’re reading this and know of a Chopin recording worth listening to, please send me a link.

The piano journal that I’m posting here is my attempt to document working towards learning the piano, why it inspires me, what I hope to achieve, and to just document the undertaking. I’ve tried this many times, but compositionally and instrumentally, I just feel ready for this change now, and I’m going to give a try; this will serve to document that process. Click here to read the whole series.

Really spent a lot of time working on my right hand pinky today. This is a real weakness for me. I think that guitar fingerpicking has helped me strengthen most digits, but that right hand pinky has never really had to do anything, and now I can feel the muscle burning a bit, and my muscle memory fighting the position. Finally after a bit I was able to get the pinky to feel comfortable and relaxed, but I really need to build the strength, and flexibility, and control into that finger. It will help with arpeggios, and a whole host of other things if I can just get that little dude under control. I remember that working with my left hand pinky, especially when doing fast runs or pull-offs on guitar, was very challenging as the ring finger and the pinky are joined a bit. I look forward to the challenge, and I’m starting to really see the weaknesses and areas that I need to improve. I did, however, come up with this little improvised miniature after I worked out the chords a bit, I’m calling it Phelt, and you can hear it below. It’s not perfect, but it’s a nice little vamp that I could see using as a building block.

Download Piano Journal sketch Mp3 – Phelt