in high school i wanted to rock out.  picked up the electric guitar and started a band.  spent 3 years learning how to play and write songs.  actually had a decent little trio at the time.  played a bunch of local gigs, even traveled to nearby towns.  recorded and LP and eventually an EP in a real studio.  the experience was priceless.

along the way i purchased a 4 track recorder and decided i wanted to be dr. dre and produce music.  my friend dave who liked to rap convinced me to make tracks for him to rhyme on.  thus producing our first high school hit, “just gonna roll.”  i played the drums, bass, and guitar on it.  that was my junior year.  then my parents bought me a casio keyboard from costco that had a 5 track digital midi recorder built in.  i read the instruction manual and hooked up even more dope tracks.  i was able to program drums, bass, and synth lines all on the keyboard.  then i would bounce it down to 2 tracks in stereo on the four track recorder.  this would leave 2 more left to mess with.  i’d usually lay down an electric guitar part and leave the last to bust phat rhymes.  this led to a catalogue of about 10 songs, which we still have to this day. one of these days i’ll put one up on here.

the college years.  was accepted into a private arts college with a classical piano scholarship.  the first day of school i told the director i didn’t wanted to play classical piano anymore.  i was interested in learning how to play music which i knew led to jazz.  they let me in the program and i started a new quest.  i knew very little about jazz and was placed in the beginner program.  beginner meaning most these kids hardly knew how to play their instruments.  how did these kids get into a music school?  it was hard at first but i quickly surpassed everybody in the department and became one of the top players in the school.  guess it’s not saying much considering there were only about 30 jazz students.

a good friend of mine who played drums asked me to join a band with him called “rootjooce.”  it was an experimental jazz/groove/jam band trio.  we played about a year and recorded 2 LP’s.  again the experience was priceless.  learned a lot and blew my ears out in the clubs playing very loud.

then i moved to new york after i graduated.  thought i wanted to be a jazz pianist.  something changed in my heart after arriving to the big apple.  i started to get burnt out on jazz.  it’s a beautiful style and i’ll never stop loving it but it’s not in my heart to bop around on the keys.  don’t get me wrong, i still play old standards from time to time, even recorded a solo jazz piano record.

that was before i met probe dms.  a born and bred new yorker emcee/producer in hip hop.  he blew my mind when i first heard his music.  nothing was contrived, all from the heart and amazingly complex.  i just spent 4 years in a music conservatory and realized he knew more about music than i did.  i quickly changed direction and started recording with him.  he’d make the beats, and i’d lay down keyboard tracks.  i sat and listened for hours soaking up the strong rhythms he played into the MPC2000.  we developed a style on our own which we named “spymusic.”  also had a single that the dj scene embraced entitled “cloak.”  still make music when we both have the time too, in fact we need to make more.

soon after i met probe i purchased a pro tools set up.  all the sudden i was back in the crib making tracks again.  i came full circle wanting to be a producer.  singers, rappers, all sorts of artists were coming by and i was helping them put songs together. i met an amazing gospel singer, shelby johnson and produced an LP for her.  tracked the whole band in my crib.  drums, bass, keyboards, everything.  i really liked the end product and once again, a great experience. i wrote a song entitled “dreamer” that she sang and if i could say frankly, KILLED IT!  in one take she sang from her soul and made it her own.  she brought something out of the lyrics that i hadn’t heard even though i penned it.  shelby and i are still friends today.  i have to say this, she’s been touring with prince and the NPG the last couple years and it’s exciting for me to hear about her adventures.

after that i met jamie mclean through his brother who played drums on shelby’s LP.  jamie was touring with the dirty dozen brass band at the time but had a bunch of songs he’d written and was flirting with breaking from them and going solo.  i was skeptical at first knowing that he had a good gig and was already touring the world.  but he kept booking tours and eventually quit the DDBB and moved to NYC. this is when i started a new journey.

we really didn’t know what we were doing.  we’d pack up a mini-van and hit the road.  traveled to cities in the northeast and mainly the south.  we thought we were sick.  opened for acts that had followings and it was a new experience for me to play in front of big crowds.  i knew i wanted to do this after we opened for the north mississippi all stars in chicago at the house of blues.  it was sold out, loud, people all over the balcony, what a night!  and to think we had only played a hand full of a shows at the time and there we were, acting like rock stars.

now this whole time i was only playing keyboards in the band.  i kept thinking we need backup vocals on the songs, jamie agreed.  but i had never even tried to sing before.  so one night, i decided i was gonna go for it.  it was in memphis.  we were trying to work some parts out in the van on the way.  the sound guy threw up a mike in front of my keyboards and i went for it.  it was awful!  i was disappointed but afterwards jamie told me it sounded good.  he kept encouraging me to try so i did.  took a while but i got more comfortable singing in a microphone, and in front of human beings.  another journey starts inside this one.  waited till i was 29 to even try singing.  still working on it all the time.

at this point i had only written one song that i was proud of.  all my friends kept encouraging me to write more.  as you can tell by this post i’m not the most articulate writer. plus i don’t speak intelligently, so i never thought of myself as someone who could write clever lines.  now i’m entering the song writing phase.

i bought a notebook at a deli in the city (coincidentally was the exact deli jerry seinfeld and larry david thought of the concept for the show “seinfeld”) and i told myself i’d fill the whole book up with songs.  the first 10 pages are just graffiti. my patented “solo” outline with multi colored markers.  probably had the notebook for about a month and had nothing.  we were driving back from atlanta to new york after a week run.  everybody was asleep and i was driving.  all the sudden this line popped in my head.

“one day i followed the river to the sea. i had time to waste i was hopin it would set me free.  and when i got there i heard tenor melodies. singing will you ever come to me.”

the next morning i wrote it down in the notebook and finished the song in about an hour.  i was elated that i finished one song.  then it occured to me i had about 50 pages left in the book.  this was gonna take more than a feeling if i wanted to take songwriting seriously.  the next song i penned was “shades of honeydew” which is on jamie’s new EP, american heartache.

“everytime i write a song.  i can feel time passing on.”  the first line of the song.  i felt like each one of these was gonna take years of my life away cause i sweated over every line.  eventually i stopped caring about what people would think and started writing what sounded good to me.  it’s still hard for me to hear criticism about my writing but it comes with the territory.  playing music is easy, writing is hard.

i’ve probably written 30 songs in the last couple years.  there’s a few in there i haven’t finished, or i don’t like em.  it’s gotten easier but it’s still breaks my brain everytime i sit down at the piano with a pencil.  but learning to play and sing songs by myself have been one of the biggest thrills for me.

eventually i picked the guitar back up.  purchased a martin J-40 about a year ago.  started writing with that and now play on a few songs in jamie’s band.  i probably play guitar more than anything when i’m at home.  i love how i can just sit on the couch and make music.  you have to get up and walk to the piano and sit down in order to make it happen.  the guitar is mobile, that’s what i love about it.

now i’m playing bass.  this is why i decided to write this post.  i can’t figure out why i can’t just play the piano and call it a day.  we are currently bassless for this next tour.  we must’ve called 30 cats in town, everybody’s working.  we recently have been rehearsing with me on bass because it’s been just the three of us practicing.  i always record my own bass parts but never thought i’d play in front of people.  somehow it seems to be apart of me.  the piano has low notes so i understand the role of it.  lemme tell you though, it is fun to play!  i love how simple it is, yet it holds the music together.  hope i can pull this off. wish me luck.

who knows what i’ll do next.  i’m no longer planning my future with music.  it’s an endless journey that i’m now realizing i have no control over.  thought i was gonna be a clasical pianists, guitar player, jazz pianist, singer/songwriter, bassist, producer.  whateves!  i’m just glad i’m in the passenger seat.

this is where it all started.  my first recording.  i was about 7 years old, 1984.  this is a snippet of a sonatina by clementi.

Download audio file (clementi-remaster.mp3)

even if it’s a II-V-I to Cmaj7, instead of Cmin, those scales work over the D and G chords.  but on Cmaj7, you can’t play a C melodic minor.

Download MP3 – Beautiful Love

study bill evans.  in college i listened mainly to his trio work with scott lafaro and paul motion.  “explorations” is one of my favorite records of all time.  first off there’s two types of playing (in my opinon).

1) linear, meaning melodies, or lines.  2) vertical, meaning harmony, or chords.  you can almost see the concept through sound.  a melody is something that runs through space horizontally.  imagine walking between 2 points in a room with a marker on the ground, but not in a straight line.  after words you could look at that line and see it as something that’s linear.  harmony are notes stacked on top of each other to create a more complex sound.  now imagine you could float and mark the air and ground between those same 2 points.  if you could look at that line from an angle it’d have a line on the ground, and one in the air. together they create 2 points at the same time, but in diffent spots vertically.  that is a chord.

i used to play chords with my left hand and melodies with my right.  as i progressed i started to put them together.  chords should have a melody too.  in the audio example, listen to evans use of chords and melodies together.  i’ll explain more in detail next time about how to handle this.  for now, just think of playing a chord with your left and a melody in your right at the same time, same rhythms too.  you’ll notice a more complex sound.

first chorus he plays a single note lines with his right with limited comping chords with his left.  by the 2nd and 3rd chorus he backs up his lines with chords playing at the same time.  see if you can tell.