Oscar Peterson Remembered

Canadian jazz legend, pianist, composer, Grammy Award winner, humanitarian and Order of Canada recipient Oscar Peterson passed away on December 23. He was of 82.

Oscar Peterson's website, containing news, biographical, band, journal, discography, photos, audios and more.Wikipedia article on Oscar PetersonCBC tribute to Oscar PetersonThe Press Association's article, Tributes Pour In for Oscar PetersonCollections Canada websiteThe Toronto Star's memoriamThe Canadian EncyclopediaLoss of a Legend - CTV Tribute

"C Jam Blues" never sounded so fine!

This is one of the Oscar Peterson CD's in my music collection:

Scales Help at Scaleindex.com

[February 5, 2013 update: Scaleindex.com is no more. Instead, check out this article on Freejazzlessons.com on the "10 Jazz Scales You Should Know"] I stumbled upon this site while trying to makes heads or tails out of the Lydian Dominant mode (jazz musicians are probably shaking their heads at this as they know very well what Lydian Dominant is). Scaleindex.com is a very thorough site, containing scale formulas, chord analyses, note names and audio clips of everything from our standard major and minor scales to the Bebop Dominant and Hindu scales.

My student R, who likes to compose, is excited about writing in some of these different keys while my student A is currently on a modal kick with her repertoire, so she is pumped about learning how to play modes. The funny thing is, neither student is in Conservatory Canada's Contemporary Idioms syllabus. Both girls are in the traditional stream of ConCan and RCM respectively.

As for my students who need to learn the Lydian Dominant mode for their Contemporary Idioms exam, they're just relieved to have the scale formula in an easy to understand format (as am I).

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Chick Corea Concert in Calgary

Multiple Grammy Award winning jazz pianist/keyboardist/composer Chick Corea is performing in Calgary on November 25 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.Chick Corea is known for his work in jazz fusion. This is one of my favourite works by Chick Corea, called "Spain":

Head to Ticketmaster's website to order tickets.

I'm looking forward to watching and listening to a jazz great in action.

"Spain" is from his Chick Corea Akoustic Band album:

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Busy Season

As merchandisers will tell you, there are only 32 shopping days left before Christmas.

Any musician will tell you that right after Halloween, we have mere weeks before we are up to our eyeballs with Christmas concerts and party gigs. I'm currently working my Christmas gig repertoire back under my fingers, along with some of the songs from Conservatory Canada's Contemporary Idioms syllabus. Well, I'm finding that it's one thing to stay a couple of pages ahead of my students. It's a complete other story getting their songs up to performance standard.

In the end, some of the new songs won't make the cut this season. They'll be replaced with old standbys with a twist. For instance, I've discovered that God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen sounds very nice with a Latin pattern or a Boogie Woogie pattern and that Blue Christmas sounds neat with a Honky Tonk bass.

Be brave. Next time you practice your holiday music, add some zip to your songs by changing it a bit. You'll find it entertaining and quite enjoyable.

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Adding Passion to your Technique

Today, my student L came to her piano lesson a little on the grumpy side. Blame it on her homework and group projects. We tried something today that was rather fun - we added a bit of passion to her technical exercises.

We focussed on two keys today - G major and its minor cousin E minor. We wound up staying in E minor since it sounds angrier. I asked her to play me some Angry Scales, Stressed Out Triads and Frantic Arpeggios. She was rather convincing in conveying her emotions of the day. The way she made her triads zigzag really sounded like a stressed out person running in one direction and rapidly turning to run the other way. Ditto for her arpeggios.

After venting her frustrations" through her technique, L's rendition of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" was sufficiently tender, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was perfectly boogie-ish, while Beethoven's "Ecossaise was positively perky.

Now I'm willing to bet that if I had her start with Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, it would have sounded like someone yelling.

I tried the same tactic with a few more students tonight to great success as I had quite a few students stressed out from homework. I think I'm going to give it a try with my own technical exercises.

At the end of L's lesson, I wished her well with her school projects and expressed my hope that within a few days, she'll be able to practice some Happy Scales, Excited Triads and Lazy Arpeggios.

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.