Still practicing those pesky left hand voicings. I jammed with some people yesterday, they were kind of a Phish type bunch of guys, it was kind of fun. They were not really theory junkies like I am, so my ear got a work out in trying to find acceptable keys to play in in what was more or less free improv. Once I had the key, or even without it necessarily, I was finding myself coming up with creative voicings for the most part, and finding places in the beat to play. They had a guitar, a bass, and drums.
Also, I went to see what turned out to be a "jazz recital", which is part of the Pittsfield City Jazz, a thing that spreads over two or three weeks and has various events, it involved some teenage players, in what was called the prodigy series. The website listed for the pianist and I think the trio too is http://almamacbride.com/ . The pianist name was Alma Macbride, the names of the other performers are probably available through one of the links above.
I have a couple thoughts on this. One, a prodigy is not a smart kid, or a talented kid, or something like that, a prodigy is a freak of a nature that does things that boggle the mind as to how a child of that age can do it. Calling something a prodigy series is just destined to put unrealistic expectations on young performers, who it turned out to little surprise to just be young musicians who will probably have to work for their abilities just like the rest of us. Secondly, I think jazz is getting a lot of kids of classical backgrounds, and this is not necessarily good. Classical training teaches you not to make mistakes. The biggest danger in jazz is not making mistakes--people will forgive a lot of errors--it's being boring. If jazz was golf, the object would not be to finish with a low score by not making any bogeys, it would be to make the highlight real the most times, even if you finish over par because you keep whacking the ball in the water. I think these kids were probably a little nervous, and I think because of a classical background, and the setting was a little stuffy too, they retreated into overly safe playing, the result being that it was insufferably boring. I left shortly.
Anyhow, here's the chord voicings I'm using here:
I solo over that using the notes of the Ab major scale, except over the one chord I use the Ab Lydian sometimes (not always, I will use the Db note as a passing note sometimes too). Oh I was suppose to use the Eb pentatonic, which you can use over all three chords, but I forgot to do it here for the recording I think. Darn. Anyhow, here it is, it's literally just me starting figuring out the voicings and playing the scale on top, so don't expect Beethoven's fifth:
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