Back in the jazz room at West Ranch High School I’m lucky enough to have these three things: a trendy Yamaha keyboard (a similar one to the Motif model), a jazz band-exclusive standup Yamaha piano (unfortunately, the choir has already claimed the baby grand), and the fifth-edition Real Book 1 & 2.
But the keyboard’s got a massive amount of buttons that I’m still yet to figure out, and the acoustic piano — even with the lid up — can’t really be heard when the drums are playing.
This Real Book, however, has been one of the biggest facilitators in my exploration of the jazz world.
A bit about our jazz band — we’re the advanced band of the two jazz bands at West Ranch High School (otherwise known as the West Ranch High School Studio A Jazz Band) and we practice every day in the wee hours of the morning. At least that’s what 7:00 in the morning is for me. But having jazz as a first period is really nice in the fact that I’m waking up it every morning — even if it means blindly fumbling through blues warm-ups and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes at the same time.
It’s pretty difficult to describe my jazz teacher in words — he’s one of those sage, older teachers who are always, always right. And he’s actually always right, too. You’ll see what I mean when we get into jazz competition season in the spring.
Anyways, I just wanted to tell you about something kind of amusing that’s been going on this week in jazz class:
I have this habit of messing around with the Real Book after class (it’s still pretty early in the morning and the room’s always nice and quiet) — I either look in the table of contents for a song or I flip open to a random page and try to read it. It’s really soothing, especially right before I dive into AP Calculus the next period.
But yesterday the Real Book was already opened up to Alice in Wonderland, a wonderful tune on Bill Evans’ Sunday at the Village Vanguard album.
It’s such a pretty tune; I’ve got a huge soft spot for two-five-one-ish ballads like these. And I’ve been sitting at the piano for ages trying to figure out Evans’ chords on this recording. I know there’s transcriptions out there, but having someone else do the transcriptions for me kind of feels like cheating to me — I dunno, it’s a weird conscience thing.
Usually the room’s pretty empty — my jazz teacher leaves for his office in the next room, and there’s only a few musicians like me hanging around and practicing some music. But this time, my jazz teacher stayed and listened for a bit — and when I finished, he told me that since he knew I usually played the first thing I saw in the Real Book, he’d opened it up beforehand to Alice in Wonderland to see what I’d do.
This was yesterday — I think now he’s going to make his own habit of opening up the Real Book to what he wants to hear me play. And hey, I think I’m right — today it was open to Lady Bird:
What do you think he’s going to pick tomorrow?
CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: In a Sentimental Mood/Duke Ellington and John Coltrane/Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (We’re playing a tenor feature arrangement of this and it’s super lovely — I’m looking forward to posting a video of it soon.)
P.S. Thanks to A Blog Supreme for mentioning thejazzpost – be sure to check out other thoughts on today’s jazz at this blog here.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Yo.
If you haven’t noticed there something madly wrong about the time.
Difficult to hear but ain’t the drummer playing on 1&3 the whole song?
You should work on that time man!
/w
Sorry that was meant to Anchorage and not to Paul Motian.