musical thoughts

Here’s another bebop video post. Bud Powell’s Parisian Thoroughfare.

I spent a fairly moderate amount of time working this out. The key to it for me was the ascending triplet line, I had to make adjustments to my technique to get that to flow. I had to move more toward a thumb under style of playing, which I’d never done before. Candidly, I’d never bothered to figure out a fingering for a major scale before, so that was sort of interesting too.

The backing track gets to about 240 bpm at the end (they speed up), so eighth note triplets at that speed would last about 84 milliseconds (whee). This was fun to work on. I took a very embellishment-oriented approach to building lines in my solo (hey if you miss a note you’re just an embellishment away from the right one).

There are some wobbly parts, but this is a take where I was really having fun with it. I like that I was able to get a pretty significant accent pattern into the triplet lines of the head, and the mic setup portrays the dynamics really well. The ting I need to work on is just staying relaxed throughout, I get excited and tense up and play loud and that’s when I lose the control I otherwise have. I like this take because I lose it and notice and get it back a couple times. I really focused on just relaxing completely on the out chorus and it worked. My action is so beautifully regulated that it almost plays itself, but at this tempo I can only hang if I completely avoid tension in my hand.

This is also my first proper video with stereo grand piano recording. I used my pair of Behringer ECM-8000 omnidirectional mics in a Jecklin array configuration, and it produced a superb stereo field. It also picked my vocalizations up, but luckily the backing track masks that pretty well. Reaper ran flawlessly on a very modest spec laptop and I recorded several takes through the Edirol UA-25 while listening to the backing track on cans and everything worked completely flawlessly from the audio engineering perspective. I hate having to babysit the recording and juggle a lot of engineering while I am playing, so Reaper’s workflow around live takes and recording in general really suits me and I’m totally happy with that software.