Leave the fun aside for the moment, before I went to petroscience, I went to the MPO box office to lookup the latest calendar and saw that there’ll be an upcoming event on jazz and there is also a Haydn piano concerto. So, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. I bought tickets for both events and that I’ll spend the whole day at KLCC to watch the two events.
So I woke up early to catch the train in to KL central before changing trains to KLCC. I reached KLCC at about 10.40am in time to get a front seat that not many favored. (Typical Malaysians) so then the presenter, Joseph Pruessner, the assistant principal bassist led out the class.
We started out with simple chords: Major chords, Dominant 7th, Dominant 9th, flat 9th, Major 7th, Augmented chords, Major 9th, Sustained 4 (sus4), flat 5th, Minor 6th, sharpened 11th, and the list goes the same with the minor chords. Next were the modes. Modes were used widely before we had major and minor scales. If not I’m not mistaken, people use modes because there the system was not well tempered yet. Now, vocalist use modes widely. There are the Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aoelian, and Locrian. The modes are for example Ionian on C so you play from C to C in C major. Dorian in C is play from C to C in the key of B flat major. So you count backwards. Because the interval between C and D is a major second, and backwards major second is B flat. This calculation is done during intense practice during group keyboard class. Anyhow, screw the calculation, its confusing if you are not a musician. The point here is, in jazz, certain modes are used with certain chords. For example, the chord B flat in a bar, you could use all the notes in the Ionian scale during improvisation. If you have a dominant 7th chord you use the notes in the mixolydian mode.
The chart is as follow: Ionian- Major, Major 7th, and Major 9th. Dorian- Minor and minor 7th, Phrygian- Minor 9th, Lydian- #11, Mixolydian- Dominant 7th, Aoelian- natural minor, Locrian- diminished chords.
So we tried the chords on blue monk, a piece from Thelonius Monk from “The Thelonius Monk Story” so it kinda sounded like this:
It was good though I thought, then we heard the recording on by Monk and John Coletrain at Carnegie hall, the piece sounded great and that I found out that it has been rumored that Coletrain didn’t want to show up and that he needed to be dragged out from the hotel to the concert hall. From the recording too, I found out that different jazz musicians have distinctive motives that they liked to play. For example, Coletrain liked patterns of sequences in the melody, Monk liked chromatic dissonance, is a minimalist most of the time, playing sparse notes that change at a slow rate, and play whole tone scales. In a piece, usually the musicans would play the “head” which is the main melody, mostly twice before the improvisation takes place. Then after series of improvisations, some one would point at the head indicating the last improvisation and that the next repetition will be the main melody and that the music would end.
A highly recomended CD to buy...Thelonious monk and John Coletrain
Prepairing audio for us listen and jam
So we then played on All of Me. This is how we are taught how to improvise. Jazz is always about improvisations. Improvisations can’t be learnt overnight, and it comes through practice. However, you could learn to improvise by stages like improvise firstly by using chord notes. Then, you could use scale passages going up and down according to the chords used and you could use chromatic notes. Try them individually and mix them all together to make it your own. Then try using like Coletrain did which was using sequences and monk, using some dissonance. Razif once taught us a trick. If you played a wrong note, play it many times so that it sounds correct. Along the way you’ll pick up tricks here and there, main thing is you practice…heehee, something that I’m lacking at the moment.
So that ended my jazz appreciation class and that he mentioned a bit during his time in collage, John Cage was one of the lecturers there, he made them listen to the walls and you’ll be surprised on what you’ll hear. Not other peoples conversation, but as we know John Cage, everything is music. I didn’t miss a chance to take photos of the pictures of performers and conductors that had played at DFP.
My boyfriend Joshua Bell, heehee....
Riccardo Mutti
Lorin Maazel
Neville Creed
Other awards and trophies
Quiet office on a sunday
Initially I wanted to try to have lunch at Nyonya because; I always see the place full and guessed that the food must be good. When I went up, it was not only full but people were queuing up to get in the restaurant. Sigh, time wasn’t on my side so I went to the Lebanese and Persian restaurant and ordered chicken kebab. It tasted good, on the way back I saw baklava, my favorite, but it was with the buffet that I didn’t take. There’ll always be next time…I hope.
At 3pm I went to the concert. The first was Overture to La fedelta premiata by Haydn. The next was keyboard Concerto in D (Hob.XVIII:11). I like Haydn. He always pleases me. The pianist Cederic Tiberghien, played a beautiful encore piece by Bartok that I never heard before. Or I can’t seem to recall listening to a pleasing Bartok piece like this before. After the intermission, they played Bruckner Symphony in B flat. It was a bit heavy to listen at 4pm I guess. There were parts that sounded like Barber’s adagio for strings though that I liked. After the concert, I went to pray, and then I headed home.
It was raining as usual and on the way there was an accident near Kampung Dato’ Harun stop. Anyhow, KLCC was so packed that day, I think due to the PC fair and all the pathogen and the rain and the heat had left me with flu and a head ache. On top of that my wisdom tooth is driving me nuts again. I hope I could be back in good shape before I go to Indonesia at the end of the week. I’m so excited but the bad sore trough has drained my energy to get excited. I also would like to go to the International book fair. We’ll see.
