From the introduction to a biography of Thelonious Monk:
Three decades ago, when I was young, messing around with piano and studying bass slightly more seriously, my new stepfather, Paul, a professional tenor sax player, had me listen to Monk and Johnny Griffin perform "Evidence." Soon I memorized everyone's solo on that record, including Roy Haynes's unaccompanied snare drum rolls, which is impossible to approximate verbally without spraying spittle on anyone standing within five feet of my mouth. I became completely obsessed with Monk's sound, his clang-clang sound of surprise, rich with deafening silences, dissonances, and harmonic ambiguities. It was that ice cream truck sound: Monk the good humor man. I worked on that sound on piano, from Monk's blues and intricate and lovely ballads to his up-tempo numbers, which nearly put me in the hospital. His sound seemed beyond my grasp, beyond my comprehension. I played more notes; I played fewer notes; I changed the chord voicings; I played in front of the beat, I danced around the beat, and finally gave up and retreated to rubato. I listened and listened some more. I even summoned him from the ancestors to help ... and he came to me, in a dream. Decked out in divine alligator shoes, a dark green silk suit, yellow tie, bamboo sunglasses, and a cold straw hat, he snuck up behind me as I sat hunched over my stepfather's Steinway upright, looked over my shoulder, and simply mumbled, "You're making the wrong mistakes."
----
Perhaps we all make the same mistakes. If we made the right ones, maybe we'd understand?
Gassho,
Kirk
(Posted from my iPhone; please excuse any typos or brevity.)
Three decades ago, when I was young, messing around with piano and studying bass slightly more seriously, my new stepfather, Paul, a professional tenor sax player, had me listen to Monk and Johnny Griffin perform "Evidence." Soon I memorized everyone's solo on that record, including Roy Haynes's unaccompanied snare drum rolls, which is impossible to approximate verbally without spraying spittle on anyone standing within five feet of my mouth. I became completely obsessed with Monk's sound, his clang-clang sound of surprise, rich with deafening silences, dissonances, and harmonic ambiguities. It was that ice cream truck sound: Monk the good humor man. I worked on that sound on piano, from Monk's blues and intricate and lovely ballads to his up-tempo numbers, which nearly put me in the hospital. His sound seemed beyond my grasp, beyond my comprehension. I played more notes; I played fewer notes; I changed the chord voicings; I played in front of the beat, I danced around the beat, and finally gave up and retreated to rubato. I listened and listened some more. I even summoned him from the ancestors to help ... and he came to me, in a dream. Decked out in divine alligator shoes, a dark green silk suit, yellow tie, bamboo sunglasses, and a cold straw hat, he snuck up behind me as I sat hunched over my stepfather's Steinway upright, looked over my shoulder, and simply mumbled, "You're making the wrong mistakes."
----
Perhaps we all make the same mistakes. If we made the right ones, maybe we'd understand?
Gassho,
Kirk
(Posted from my iPhone; please excuse any typos or brevity.)
)
Comment