-120-
It has been a month since I started living on Kojima Island in Okayama. I am enjoying life surrounded by rich nature.
When there are no distractions in daily life, it becomes possible to stay with a single thought for a long time. Back when I lived in the suburbs of Chiba, I never returned to the thoughts I had the night before as soon as I woke up. I was always caught up in getting ready for work or practicing, and my attention was constantly scattered. Life on Kojima is different. I can spend the entire day thinking about one topic, and when I grow tired of it, I naturally move on to the next. I think this is because there are no loud noises or voices interrupting my focus, and my work is not busy, giving me plenty of free time. The stress that used to come from human relationships has disappeared, and being surrounded by clean air and the sea is healing my mind. When I lived in Chiba, I made it a habit to meditate for 40 minutes each day. I had no choice, because if I let my guard down, I felt I would be swallowed by transactional relationships and the pressure of social expectations. In an environment full of distractions, working full time from nine to six, it was necessary to organize my priorities in order to spend my limited free time on something meaningful. On the island, I no longer need to worry about any of that. Just looking out the window at the blue sea and sky is enough to bring me peace.
On the other hand, living in a place where almost no one is within a one-kilometer radius makes me uneasy. I wonder if I would be able to handle things by myself if something were to happen. Last month, I got food poisoning from oysters. Hinase, in Okayama, is a major oyster-producing area, and you can get large, fresh raw oysters at prices unimaginable in the city. I got carried away eating them, and before I knew it, I was bedridden for several days. Fortunately, I had some food that my stomach could handle, so I managed to get through it. But since there are no stores on the island, if I had run out, finding food would have been difficult. I am grateful that I have now become friendly with the people who live on the island. If something happens, I know I can call for help. It is a strong reminder that no one can live entirely on their own.
Lately, I have found myself thinking more often, in a vague way, about the next stage of life. I am fortunate to be able to imagine how I want to express myself and what kind of person I want to become, but I still do not have a clear sense of where I want to be. Living in a place disconnected from human relationships makes me long for the kind of environment I had in the United States, surrounded by musicians and constantly inspired. At the same time, the pace of city life does not suit me, so I can also picture myself continuing to live freely in a quiet place like this, away from society. I often wish there were a kind of utopia where musicians and artists gather in a place rich in nature.
This month, I spent most of my free time with my instrument. I also had many opportunities to watch my own playing. This is something I have to do, even though I do not want to. The more my ears develop, the more distant my reality feels from my ideal. My ears always advance first, and my technique tries to follow afterward, which creates a dilemma that may never be resolved. Music has a way of keeping a person humble.
In April, I focused on improving my three-finger technique on my right hand. I realized that when I concentrate on rhythm, my right hand cannot keep up. When I try to play pizzicato across the strings, I still cannot move my right hand smoothly, and I feel that mastering this technique will take a long time. It seems to be improving little by little, but it is hard to guess how long it will take before I can play pizzicato with the same ease as with two fingers. I remember seeing an article online saying that NHOP, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, took two years to develop the technique. More accurately, it said that his pizzicato style had changed when someone saw him again two years later.
There are two types of right-hand angles or styles when using the three-finger technique. One involves keeping the fingers parallel to the strings, and the other is similar to the electric bass style, where the fingers are perpendicular to the strings. The first method allows for a larger contact area between the fingers and the strings, which creates more leverage and results in a bigger sound. The second method is useful when playing fast phrases. The challenge lies in the first method, where playing phrases that cross strings becomes more difficult compared to the two-finger technique. In this sense, the three-finger approach does not align with the natural motion of the right arm. Still, I do not believe that makes it worthless to learn, so I plan to continue practicing it.
As for practice this month, I focused on transcribing Coltrane’s compositions. This may be a path every jazz learner eventually walks, but I sometimes wonder which legendary player’s solo would benefit me the most to transcribe next. I chose to work on Coltrane’s solo on “26-2” because I wanted to decode his chord progressions. However, after transcribing the solo and identifying where each note sits on the fingerboard, I stopped repeating it. I was interested in how Coltrane applied substitutions to the harmony, but somehow it did not quite click for me. While digging through Coltrane’s music, I came across “Like Sonny.”
Before I knew it, I was already transcribing this solo. Every part of it is so beautiful that I feel compelled to copy each phrase. Compared to “26-2,” the range of the phrases is wider and the sound has a sense of strength. By the way, this piece was influenced by a phrase at 3:22 in Sonny Rollins’ solo on Kenny Dorham’s “My Old Flame.”
Mike Longo: The Rhythmic Nature Of Jazz
In April, I spent a lot of time thinking about Mike Longo’s masterclass DVD, The Rhythmic Nature of Jazz. Mike was a jazz pianist who performed with Dizzy Gillespie, and this DVD includes polyrhythmic concepts passed down directly from Dizzy. The fact that the thoughts of Dizzy, one of the founders of bebop, are preserved on video makes this material valuable from both an educational and historical perspective. I first learned about the DVD after watching Hal Galper, the pianist for Cannonball Adderley, on YouTube. I was interested in understanding jazz syncopation, so I started studying the content of the DVD and was surprised by how philosophical it turned out to be.
To summarize the key points I learned, the DVD explains that swing rhythm contains hidden polymetric layers such as 6/8, 2 against 3, 3/4, 5/4, and 7/4, and that developing a feel for these layers can improve one’s rhythmic sense. The exercises are meant to be practiced using congas or hand drums in order to internalize the polymeter. It also explains that, while classical music tends to be monorhythmic, jazz features overlapping polyrhythms. A clear example of this is A Night in Tunisia, where the bass, piano, drums, and saxophone each play different accents at the same time.
On the philosophical side, one of the most striking ideas was the need to approach music from an ontological perspective. Specifically, it means understanding music as a physical phenomenon and allowing it to naturally lead you to the next note, resulting in spontaneous and organic soloing. According to Mike Longo, the origin of this ontological approach to music can be traced back to Stravinsky.
When I first started watching the DVD, I didn’t understand what Mike Longo meant by “You don’t put feeling into music, you get feeling from music.” According to him, receiving emotion from music aligns with Pythagoras’ idea of Musica Universalis, the concept of the music of the spheres. On the other hand, putting emotion into music comes from the ego and imagination of the performer. In other words, the main theme of the DVD is not about projecting one’s imagined emotions outward, but about how to let music arise naturally on its own. To achieve this, as the title of the DVD suggests, it is essential to build your solo around the groove.
Both Michael Brecker and Christian McBride, two musicians I admire, have said in interviews that they approach their instruments like drums. Louis Armstrong also said something along the lines of, “The challenge in playing jazz lies in finding the right note at the right time,” though I cannot recall the exact words.
One of jazz’s greatest innovations was the incorporation of African-rooted rhythms into music, which is why rhythm and groove must be central to any serious understanding of jazz. However, even when I studied jazz in a university class in the United States, the education was mostly based on harmony rooted in Western music traditions. I remember learning typical chord progressions and diatonic scales, but I was never taught even the basics of polyrhythms such as three against four.
Likewise, when searching online for how to play jazz, most of the information is saturated with advice on how to play common scales or triads over chord changes. There is very little discussion about topics like syncopation or the deeper meaning of swing from a rhythmic perspective. I believe the reason for this lies in the nature of rhythm itself. As Mike Longo discusses in the DVD, rhythm is a form of experiential knowledge rather than intellectual knowledge. Compared to harmony, rhythm is a more abstract concept that is harder to internalize and even harder to put into words.
At some point this month, while watching an interview with a jazz musician, possibly Gary Bartz, Pat Metheny, or Ulf Wakenius, I had a realization. Since I make a habit of watching musician interviews frequently, I can’t remember exactly who said it, but I recall someone mentioning that when soloing, it is not about which notes you play. Rather, by shaping your solo with staccato rhythms, like Morse code, the storyline of the solo becomes more organic. I feel this idea touches on the core of an ontological approach to improvisation.
Back in February, I wrote a blog post inspired by an interview with Hal Galper, where I reflected on the importance of listening in one’s mind. However, at that time, I had not yet clarified what exactly we are supposed to listen to. After watching Mike Longo’s DVD, I realized that what we should be listening to while improvising is rhythm patterns.
Gear and Recording Equipment I Got
Lately, I have had more opportunities to practice and record outdoors. Since it takes less than three minutes to walk from where I live to the seaside, I often take my SLB300 outside whenever I feel like it. The temperature has been around 20 degrees, which feels almost the same as practicing indoors, so I see this cooler season as the perfect chance and have been going out frequently.
When recording outdoors, I found it troublesome to carry an amp around and capture its sound with a shotgun mic attached to my action camera. To solve this, I bought a condenser microphone from Audio-Technica. I now think I should have bought it much earlier. It does a great job of capturing the attack of pizzicato, and when mixed with a DI signal, it brings out a more natural, acoustic sound. For that same reason, I often practice using only the mic instead of plugging into an amp. At first, I was only interested in using it for recording, but now I also place it near the window and enjoy listening to the birds and natural sounds it picks up. It has become something I find soothing.
The laptop I bought last year for about ten thousand yen at a secondhand shop often lost data while recording, which led me to get a MacBook Air. It works well and is easy to use. However, I have noticed that I now spend more time surfing the internet.
