It's About Time

Though the textbook claims that "by the 1960s, few observers could doubt that the unofficial rivalry between cool and hot had been decided in favor of hot", I have always felt more influenced by cool jazz at least in regards to piano.

When I began to play jazz piano as a sophomore in high school, I knew next to nothing about jazz. I remember being corrected constantly over playing too many "vanilla" chords, as my director liked to call them, and I struggled to improvise any solos that had direction or intricacy over the chord progressions. In short, I was an awful jazz pianist.

But with some encouragement from a friend of mine who was our band's lead tenor player, I decided to stick it out. My band director must have seen me struggling because he called me into his office one day after class and handed me a CD. It was the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Time Out". I dutifully listened to it and it, for lack of a better phrase, caught a fire under me. I would listen to it obsessively, sitting at the piano transcribing my favorite licks by ear.

I will admit, I was never that great of a jazz pianist, but that album taught me to love jazz and taught me to listen to it. I began to understand how a person could create their own solos from nothing more than a set of chords and though my solos never sounded the way I really wanted them to, they were infinitely better than they had been and, better yet, the music I could create in my mind would occasionally find its way onto paper or into my better solos.

So, it is this album and its artists that I would like to talk about. For a young, uninspired, and lost jazz pianist, the Brubeck Quartet's cool melodies and interesting time signatures, both set me at easy and piqued my interest. The first piece on the album, "Blue Rondo a la Turk", was the focus of my critical listening last week so I'll skip to the second song.

"Strange Meadowlark" begins (and ends) with a cadenza (an unaccompanied performance by a soloist at the end or beginning of a piece) played by Brubeck. This cadenza with seems to sigh with longing for some long ago wish and shows a great proficiency for chords. As it goes on, Brubeck introduces more left hand chords that eventually lead into the theme, played by Desmond. Desmond has a very unique timbre and uses space extensively to accent the things he's played. Brubeck does the same in his solo which taught me the important of both space and understated solo lines. Too often as a pianist, I thought I had to be playing more than one note but Brubeck shows that it's not necessary to play many notes to make a good solo.

"Take Five" was written by Paul Desmond and is one of the most famous songs from this album. It is a great tune featuring Desmond extensively. Of his style, Brubeck once said, "There are so few guys that can play with the purity Paul had, but when I hear them...people who can develop a theme, and not play a million notes, but rather choice notes, I think, we were right. These are the guys who knock me out". I love this explanation because I knew that I, and most other jazz pianists, would never play licks that Charlie Parker or John Coltrane were using, but I could easily use Paul Desmond's licks. They were thoughtful, but approachable.

"Three To Get Ready" is a wonderful piece rhythm-wise. I love the way the beginning begins with straight eighth notes that eventually begin to swing, but occasionally resurface just to keep you on your toes. Brubeck's solo in this piece was one that I religiously listened to in order to transcribe portions of it and then transpose them to use them in different keys. His careful attention to accents and rhythm make a simple three note phrase seem like musical genius, and indeed it is. Rhythm can make a simple riff something else entirely.

The other three pieces on this album, "Kathy's Waltz", "Everybody's Jumpin'", and "Pick Up Sticks", were equally influential on me. I learned to play in a vast range of dynamics. Some critics have called Brubeck "heavy-handed" but I agree with his assessment of that complaint: "You know the piano was originally called piano e forte-soft and loud. I believe in using the full range of dynamics that the piano has to offer. That's what it is to play emotionally, reacting to what's going on around you". I also noticed and learned from Brubeck's comping style. He uses a lot of repetition with sparse comping, but his fills are always thoughtful and attention-catching, without displacing the soloist.

This isn't a typical research post for this class and maybe I've misjudged, but even as I learned from this album I never really understood how much I was absorbing until I began taking this class. I beginning to have a greater understanding of exactly how music affects us especially if we actively listen to it and seek to understand it. While our book did not expound much on Dave Brubeck and his Quartet, for me they will always be something more than just another band.

Sources: 
Jazz by Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins
The Great Jazz Pianists by Len Lyons