Django, John Lewis solo

John Lewis plays DJANGO: solo: He also tells that he has met DJANGO during war in France. I couldn't have a chance to hear this tune played solo. The first time I hear this tune was with MJQ.

It is a minor tune but having 8 bars with major inserted in the middle. The transition was appealing. If you listen to the MJQ playing it, during early sixties I mean, Milt jackson was dancing on the vivraphone with his mallets. And it had been rather Milt Jackson who had impressed me of his exciting yet cool playing style.

It was late '80es I have listened his own quartet somewhere in suburban San Franscisco. The tone was definitely Milt, but I felt something was missing and was not excited. Probably due Jhon Lewis wasn't there.

Listen to this solo of Lewis. You might have watched this video and so did I. But I love this little gap that is John plays minor tune with medium fast tempo. I believe you'd love it, too.

Oscar Peterson, the greatest pianist.

I didn't know till this day the death of Oscar Peterson. There are some reasons. I don't read those publications on music anymore. Nor I check online source on who's who type of directory.

I had learned a lot from his standard jazz collection. Yes, he had issued a series on great composers of so-called standard numbers. There wasn't long improvisation. His play was a few choruses for each tune.

They are just beautiful. Yeah, I agree that there is some plays that he has failed to create beautiful alley of tones. But as always, his powerful voicing did astound me and I was just awed.

I have been going through Google Alert and have found a young man, Benny Green. Well he looks young. You can hear "Taking chance of Love" with his? trio. As far as this performance is concerned, he sounds like trying out beat drums and base. His tempo is a bit different from those rhythm. Oscar had never been that. He rides on rhythm.

One more thing, Benny's left hand doesn't match to Oscars'. Voicing is rather simple with Benny if compared to Oscar.

But, I envy Benny. Yes, he definitely is the person to devise some kind of breakthrough.

3 - Attitude -- how it affects your learning

You love jazz. You want to play it to enjoy it further. You will be eager to know things. That way you'll learn faster. If you have people who is interested to see you progress, you'd like to show your progress to them. Consequently you'll learn thigns faster.

At first, I simply wished to play on time. That is to go along with rhythm without any stress at all. Which requires hard training on figners. It took me an hour to go to my teacher. I have devised a few tricks that can be done while I am on the train.

One was to spread fingers. You make fist and spread it as powerful as possible. In doing so, you try to extend your little finger.

You'll see that repeating it several times build your fore muscle a bit. You can accumulate your forearm muscle this way, as a matter of fact. Don't over do it. Several times at once. Do this training in the morning, afternoon and before you go to bed.

If you do this practice too much, your muscle become stiff. Stiffness doesn't fit to play piano. Your muscle has to be flexible. Otherwise your finger doesn't move fast.

Since you are not child, you can measure how fast your finger can move, right? As the simple yardstick, you can use your watch, but with a second hand. One beat a seond is rather slow. If you can strike your desk top using little finger four times while a second hand count up to next second, you got enough speed.

So start hitting your desk top 2 times a second with your little finger, you'll feel that you have enough finger speed to play tunes with tempo specified as medium fast.

The truth of the matter is that you invent some way as you get more motivated in learning things. And if your attitude gets to that level, it's not that far to reach your objective.