Category: music

Snarky Puppy live in Paris, in exactly the same lineup of people as they played here in Frankfurt. But the list of songs is very different, except of some of their “hits” of course (they didn’t play “Lingus” here for instance).

What I also like here are the shots which show the audience – a few people more than the 1.300 people which attended the concert here. And boy, these parisiens and parisiennes know a good groove when they hear it; love their reactions!

Snarky Puppy is very much a band of musicians and for musicians – so not everyone likes them. But again, there’s no average age of the audience, all kinds of kids from under 20 up to old guys (like me) of 60 and above. Which probably shows that although the band members are young (some are less than half my age), and although they’re standing on the shoulders of giants (of my youth, I remember quite a number of good jazzrock bands), there’s still a market for good old handmade music. Which gives kinda hope for the future, after all that disco-hiphop-sampling-stealing-whatever “dark times” of computer-produced snippet stuff… Oh, and the instruments: there’s also nothing better than the originals, from the good old B3s, Minimoogs and Rhodes pianos up to the brass and the violin.

Long live Snarky. Ordered their “We like it here” CD/DVD yesterday, from their own GroundUpMusic website, and it’s on its way already. And cheaper than at the big online retail stores, even if you count in the shipping from New York.

So please do as Michael says here: support the musicians. Especially the younger ones.

Thank you for reading.

So yesterday I was at a concert of my current favourite band and 2 times Grammy winners, Snarky Puppy. In case you’re interested, you can purchase the whole concert here (FLAC). And on one of their pictures you can even see me…

So – how was the concert? In two words: good. LOUD. Guess it was ok at the mixing console, close to which I stood later, but more at the front of the stage, the sound volume over the whole spectrum (in my opinion, especially the higher parts) was VERY high.

They let their guest start first, which was the really sweet Becca Stevens. She presented some songs from her latest album Regina with a little help from “Maz” Maher (voc), and Michael League (b, voc) from Snarky.

And after a short break to move their stuff off the stage, Snarky played, with

Chris Bullock – tenor sax, flute, & alto flute
Mike “Maz” Maher – trumpet & flugelhorn
Justin Stanton – trumpet, Fender Rhodes, & Prophet
Bobby Sparks – organ, clavinet, Minimoog, and Motif
Zach Brock – violin
Bob Lanzetti – guitar
Michael League – bass & Moog bass
Larnell Lewis – drums
Nate Werth – percussion

performing

1. GØ
2. Beep Box
3. Outlier
4. Thing of Gold
5. Tarova
6. Grown Folks
7. Tio Macaco
8. Young Stuff
9. Shofukan
10. Sleeper

I was pretty close to the stage until about 22:00 (10pm), after which I was out for a short cigarette break – and so I heard the rest of the concert from the entrance which was about as far from the stage as the mixer – where the sound was much more pleasing. Michael’s Markbass Casa was still pressing through his 8×10″ cabinet, but now the highs weren’t as shrill anymore. Much better.

The audience was about 1300 people, and as usual with Snarky, aged from under 20 to over 60. And also as usual, some of their greatest hits were sung by the audience, like “Thing of Gold”, or “Shofukan”, or even the only cover song of the evening, Steve Wonder’s “Always” by Becca & her band, where “Maz” turned out to be a really good vocalist as well.

Definitely a band to hear. Don’t miss them.

P.S.: Just downloaded their concert, and I’m glad I did – it’s awesome. The recorded sound must have come from the mixing console; it’s much better than it was close to the stage (and also better than at the entrance door of the hall). So if you haven’t done so already, listen to them at least on Youtube – but I can definitely also recommend that Frankfurt concert.

Oh, and by the way: if you looked at the linked photo above, did you also see the Focusrite interface on that Hammond B3? It’s a smaller version of the one I have…

One song, so many different interpretations. I showed this one already:

Which is from this album:

Here are just a few more:

The original, in French:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLlBOmDpn1s

Which is from this movie, also in French:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kz3hfZc-Q

There are so many more versions. Find out more about it on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Leaves_%281945_song%29 (English)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Feuilles_mortes (French)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Leaves (German)

or here:

http://www.jazzstandards.com/compositions-0/autumnleaves.htm

Enjoy…

Update from Sat, May 20th, 2017): Here’s another one, played beautifully on a solo Godin guitar by Walter Rodrigues Jr.:

… here he is, together with Cannonball Adderley on sax:

Playing “Les feuilles mortes“, better known as “Autumn Leaves”.

Enjoy.

No sir.

1. The first piece you can see here proves that you don’t need 4 strings – 3 are enough, if you open and end a piece on a gimbri.

2. You also don’t need a lot of chords – sometimes one chord is enough to totally rock da house. Hear the second one, which Marcus announced in perfect French.

3. and 4. They continue with Miles’ “Tutu“. Marcus, who is about two and a half years younger than me played that in 1986 with Miles, and here (at around the 33 minute mark) they swing like the devils, and play some really nice hard bop and cool jazz lines, just as if Miles would be present. And during the bass solo they switch to Marcus’ own “Blast”, the opening track from his 2008 album “Marcus” (and also on his 2007 album “Free“).

No, you don’t need much. Just keep practising for some 40+ years, and play as much as you can. See his discography.

Enjoy.

I’m following Andreas’ Youtube channel ‘creating your own music‘ since a while, and I can really recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about music theory. He explains it so that you can really understand the stuff, no matter what previous knowledge you might have.

But there’s more. The professor seems to be a really really nice guy as well. Yesterday I was watching his talk on ‘Exploring Harmony for Jazz Improvisation‘, and all of a sudden he made a remark like:

“I transcribed Cory Henry’s solo from the Snarky Puppy video ‘We like it here’…”

– and that stopped my right there. Couldn’t believe it; that solo starts at around 4:20 minutes in the following video, and lasts pretty much to the end of the song, which is at 10:44 or so. Wow. Look and listen:

So on Andreas’ channel I wrote how amazing that is – just imagine the amount of work he did, with transcribing each single note of what Cory played there! And, curiously, I asked if I could have that transcription.

And guess what Andreas replied, in German? Something like “sure, drop me an email and I’ll send it”.

Wow.

Thanks Andreas! As a kind of reward, I’ve put your first two books on my wishlist, and I’m pretty sure that once I have these, I want the next ones as well!

Andreas’ homepage is here; go have a look if you’re interested in a good and nice music teacher.

So, thanks again, Prof. Dr. Andreas Kissenbeck!

P.S. (Update from Wednesday, 3rd of May, 2017):

Andreas sent me an email with the transcriptions – and after reading this blog entry, he wants to emphasize that he didn’t do the work all alone – but he corrected a single-note transcription of Cory’s solo, and added the chords which were played. So double kudos to Andreas for being nice and honest. Cannot wait to hear him play with his own band…

(ka)-chun-ka-chun-ka-chun-ka-chun-ka-… (Americans: say this with a looong letter “u”, like in “choon”)

If you listen to modern music, you won’t hear much of that rhythm anymore, and maybe that’s why most people now have a horrible rhythmic feeling. They count the ones and the threes, and all they can do is stomp and clap their hands in absolutely the wrong moments. Don’t. Just don’t be that guy (or girl) who claps on the 1s and 3s. There’s so much more.

And hey, before you can even start dreaming of doing the bop like Bird or Diz or Monk, or of being cool like Miles, you have to go way back in history, and re-learn how to swing. That’s how you’ll become one of the cool cats, and that’s promised.

Just saw a short and sweet intro into this from Aimee Nolte. Look, listen, and feel:

Now the first piece she mentions – “April in Paris” from the Count Basie Orchestra – is a nice piece – if you’re able to even hear those small little accents on 2 and 4, and hear that “ka-chun-ka-chun” from the rhythm section (guitar, bass, drums) – which you probably don’t. I’ll show you anyway, just for reference and because Aimee mentioned it:

Nice. But much stronger than that is the one from Nina Simone which Aimee mentioned, and it’s called “My baby just cares for me”. Now these are the really cool cats, and maybe you’ll hear (and feel) it in that one:

But the one where you should really get it is the “C Jam Blues” from the Oscar Peterson Trio – those 2s and 4s are so strong, and after these 9 minutes you should recognize that your right foot hurts from just lifting on those last 8th triplets before the following (downbeat) quarter notes – and remember and listen what you can do with a main melody of just two notes!

Yeah. Aimee’s right. Train that for 10 minutes each day. Listen to many more swing titles, saying “(ka)-chun-ka-chun-ka-chun-ka-chun-” – and after a while, you might feel the swing.

Then take your instrument, whatever it might be, and start using that rhythm. Or if you don’t have an instrument (yet), play it with your spoon on your cup of coffee, whatever. These guys could do it. They had that rhythm in their blood.

It’s a totally different experience especially for the young ones which maybe never heard something like that.

Enjoy.