Re: What Is Hip/teaching etc

[John Novello <novello@primenet.com>]

Re: players and their  music - about time we're discussing this concept as
this is where the excitement is, not instruments. Instruments are of course
tools and very subjective. It's the players who animate and empower these
tools and create and communicate. Instead of always asking what a player
play thru and what modifications he did, etc etc etc, it should be  What
practice dod you do to play that way?  How do you think?  What's your
concept? etc etc etc.  Reminds me of a story where Art Tatum was kind of
young and up and coming and was at a jam session club where players were
sitting in and trying to out do each other. All the pianists were a bitchin
about how terrible the upright piano was - out of tune, keys missing, etc
Tatum  volunteered to get up and play next and of course just avoided the
missing notes and blew everybody away! Keith Jarrett in an interview  in
keyboard Mag, said " That instead of labeling a player as a genius etc, one
should ask  what work did that cat do to attain that level of playing? It's
always  just hard consistent work. 

I think it's much more profitable to concentrate on  a) the fundamentals of
musicianship meaning ear training - increasing what you hear in your old
head and once you do that being able to play what you hear instead of prefab
licks; technique necessary to express what "you hear" as of course depending
on what you hear, you need different levels of technique; harmony meaning
chords and all of their voicings, chord substitutions and progressions,
rhythm - subdivisions, pocket and independence; improvisation - the ability
to freely create on three levels - melodic, harmonic and rhythmic and last
but not least  repertoire meaning learning billions of tunes in the styles
that you love - this includes copying your favorite artists ideas and making
them your own as nobody wants to hear second facsimile licks when they could
hear the real thing.

Working on only one or two fundamentals makes for a lopsided player  for
example  just doing record copies might not really ever get you to develop
your own concept for two reasons:  one - without the necessary fundamentals,
I have found that students don't really ever duplicate what's on the record.
Sure they get parts of the lick and are excited, but they really don't
really get the whole lick and thus fall short of how the player really plays
and thinks; two - if they get the entire part duplicated, most can't really
play it proficiently and at tempo and with the right feel and dynamics  as
their technique if inefficient. This is extremely important. 

However, if your studies include practice(not screwing around) but actually
practice in training your ear, technique, harmony, rhythm & improvisation
and learning and playing tunes live with other musicians,   then listening
to other  great players produces amazing results. I've interviewed many many
great players for my books and tapes and even the supposed "untrained" ones
are really trained meaning although they were never formally trained in
school and by private teachers, they self studied by reading books, doing
record copies, practicing their chords and voicings, and doing tons of
playing!!! 

So for those of you looking for good teachers, make sure you look for cats
who can help you in these six fundamentals or if they only specialize in one
or two then you'll have to find other cats that pick up the slack in the
other areas. 

Re: Hammond artists and groups:

 Besides all the great artists and groups already mentioned and although
these are not new artists, two of my favorite organists who I've never seen
mentioned on this list  were Pete Robinson from Quatermass  a German group -
1969 Repertoire Records - he has chops, feel, great tones and amazing
compostional ability and  Mike Ratledge from Softmachne 1968 One Way
Records(MCA) - check out Softmachine one thru three especially.  Ratledge
was quite an innovator as to organ tone and his modal rock-type of soloing. 

later...



Novello, John
Composer/Keyboardist/Author
ED Novello/Rusch Private School for contemporary voice and piano
E Mail  novello@primenet.com
Website: http://www.primenet.com/~novello/
Ph: 818-506-0236   Fax 818-506-5559
Los Angeles, Ca 91607