Viewing: Listening - View all posts

Untitled's Blues 

I can't count the number of tunes I have played called "Untitled".  Or a variation depending on what music notation software calls a piece with the title left blank.  I personally struggled when setting an untitled poem to music with what to call it.  In the end I used words from the poem that seemed appropriate.

Jazz tunes can be short- a blues head can be 12 bars long and provide enough material for extended improvisations.  One common titling tradition is naming tunes after colleagues and friends, like…Read more

Listening (4'33''/back to school) 

As a musician, listening is everything.  We live in an age of hyper-stimulation, where commercials are noticeably louder than the content you want to watch in an attempt to shock you into paying attention.  In John Cage's famous 'silent piece' "4'33"" the performer attempts to make no sound, the idea being that the audience enters a place of heightened perception where they become aware of all the background sounds in that location.  

I remember being in a first-year music course and when we listened to this…Read more