Summer English Blog

Essential question: How does a musicians stage presents effect their overall performance. When reading Herbie and Miles' biographies, I learnt a lot about what they had to say when it came to stage presence. Miles had a whole three chapters on how he thought about the ways that he held his horn and what clothes he wore. At first I thought this was a little bit silly, but Miles validated this topic quite well. He told a story about when he was part of Charlie Parkers crew they stopped wearing ties with their suits. Now this does not sound very exciting by todays standards, but back then this was huge. They made a name for them selves by how cool they dressed. Miles' whole thing was being dressed as sharp as he could be. He did this so that he could look cool when he played jazz to his audiences. I got to learn about how this effected the listener through Miles' eyes too. Miles described listening to a few of his home town bands as well as Dizzy and what they were wearing. ...

Essential question: How does doing blog posts about certain readings improve your understanding on the topic and allow for one to apply the things that they read about to their every day lives? I ask this question because I have been really curious to find out about how reading these biographies and doing a blog on them will impact my day to day life. At first I had thought that doing the blog posts would interfere with my reading of these books. Although, I was very interested in finding out what it would be like to blog about my musical experience in side with reading about other musical experiences. I became more interested about this after I found out that Miles mentioned that he had kept a diary of certain things in his musical career. This fascinated because it allowed for him to be able to keep track of the things that he had accomplished as a musician. This seemed to be really beneficial for Miles as it allowed him to have reference to the large things that happened in his ca...

For my final project, I really wanted to see if I could improve my ability to improvise with more genuine jazz feel through learning about and trying out the approaches that Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock used on a day to day basis. After reading about the three of these unbelievable musicians, I learnt a lot about practice technique as well as a lot about the type of mentality that It takes to be a true jazz musician. Since I play at least one jazz gig a week, I thought it would be cool to map my progress through these gigs. The first thing that I started working on was fixing my practice regime to match more of what these guys were doing in their day to day lives. One of the things that really inspired me was something that Mingus had said about the way that he practiced music. He stated that he would practice without his instrument every second of the day. He would actively listen to music and pick up on important things that one would not find unless actively loo...

Essential Question: How does knowing about a musicians life story effect how one listens to their music. I came across this question after getting into Stevie Ray Vaughan a few years ago. After hearing him for the first time, I liked his music quite a lot. Following that,  I began to read about his life all over the Internet. Stevie had over come drug addiction and begun to help others do the same before dying in a helicopter crash that was meant for Eric Clapton. This story blew my mind. After this, I was totally absorbed into Stevie and his playing. Reading about these three musicians made this question reappear for me. I was fascinated to read about Miles' reactions to when he learnt about the lives of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. After being a fan of their music all of his life, he finally got the chance to meet them and learn about who they were and what they were about. The meeting of Miles and Charlie Parker is what interested me the most. Before knowing Parker, M...

Essential Question: How does listening to different types of music affect one as a musician? This question I formed due to the large amount of musician friends that I have who only listen to one style of music. One thing that I have noticed about a lot of people is that they find one style of music and only listen to that style and nothing else. I personally have no problem with that, but it makes me wonder how it effects their musicianship. There are a few jazz cats that I play with who only listen to jazz and nothing else. In their playing, I rarely hear anything but jazz. Which sounds awesome except for when I am looking to hear some out sounding stuff! With the huge degree of talent that these people have, I wonder what they would be like as musicians if they also learnt how to play some other styles of music, if their approach to playing jazz would change at all. In Herbie and Miles were the best people to read about when it came to answering this question of mine. Throughout ...

Essential Question: What makes one like a certain type of music. I am asking this question because every one of my friends likes a different type of music. Not to mention, those that like the same types of music as me, or another friend, like different artists and songs in that category. What is it that attracts one person to a certain song that another person may find completely uninteresting? I honestly was not sure, but I was hoping that I would be able to find out through reading these three books for this summer english class. Through the life experiences of Herbie, Mingus and Miles I figured out what makes someone like a certain music. When looking at these three musicians, I saw that they had all played together before. The one thing that set them apart was that they all listened and played different styles of music. Miles grew up in a town that constantly had jazz floating all around. A lot of Miles' stories from his child hood and early adult hood life consist of a po...

Leading up to this quote, Mingus is going into depth about how music makes him feel and how significant it is to his life. Throughout his entire career so far I have seen that Mingus has relied on music to express himself and release the pent up emotions that he has from years of living a rough and very complicated life. Starting from his early child hood with being racially confused due to his father telling him that he was white due to his light skin, yet experiencing harsh racism. Later on with his father beating him. Leading up to this quote, we have learnt about a few times that Mingus had experienced some serious experiences involving opportunities like getting to play with Charlie Parker as well as Dizzy and Miles. Mingus expressed these exciting experiences through songs like Haitian Fight Song. The sad moments the he experienced, he showed through the writing of songs like Moanin'. In relation to Mingus' life as a whole, Music completely corresponds with his personal...

Herbie is telling a story about the time the Herbie Hancock Sextet played at the London House in Chicago. This series of shows was towards the beginning of Herbie's career when he was still figuring out full on show business. The most difficult part that he mentioned is that they were not playing conventional jazz. The music that they were playing was described as "far out" music. The best relation to this that I have posted so far may be Miles' Bitches Brew album. Herbie and some of the founding members of the later acclaimed V.S.O.P quintet formed the Herbie Sextet and played at the London House for a week or so. The first few days resulted in disappointed audiences and the manager of the club, Oscar, being angry at the waste of money that he had put into having the Sextet play. The problem that the sextet was having was that they were unable to connect with each other or the audience that they were playing for. Once the word got out about the sextet playing out ...

I found this video today of the Miles Davis Quintet performing my favorite version of Wayne Shorters tune Footprints. Herbie is keeping it open on the keys as well as sharing some of the space that Miles is leaving in his solo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xkMxT6KGo

I realized today that being surrounded by something you are working on allows one the greatest ability to learn and become successful at that thing. I was talking to my friend Nat who recently graduated Berklee. He was telling me about some of his friends who he knew at Berklee and the things that they did when it came to music. These people would go wherever the music went in order to be completely submersed in the art. By doing this, they were able to constantly learn and pick up new approaches and ideas that they would have never thought of by just reading a book.

Essential Question: How does the musical atmosphere one is surrounded by affect their traits as a musician? I decided to ask this question because I have noticed something about the musicians from Miles' era and the musicians of now. Going back and studying the musicians of Miles, Mingus, and Herbie's era, I have decided that they all grew up in the perfect learning environment. I gathered this thought after seeing how many success stories came out of their era. Each musician had their own thing that was crafted from the materials that they had around them. If they wanted to expand on what they were accomplishing, then they looked elsewhere. Meaning they had to travel to a different area/different music scene to accomplish this. For example, Miles Davis traveled to France in his early career to expand his horizons as a musician. There he learnt a lot about the free mentality of people and musicians. He also learnt about what was possible with responsive, jazz loving audiences...

Herbie Hancock finished Leading up to this point in the book, I have learnt about Herbie's early life including his playing experiences with Donald Byrd to his joining Miles' famous great quintet from 1963 to 1968. Coming from a background of classical and soul music from growing up in Chicago, Herbie appears to have a very free flowing personality. I definitely got this vibe from a story that Herbie told about the first time he got the chance to join Miles' band. The story went that Herbie was in the middle of recording with a few musicians in his area. He was recording for a studio and was considering putting out an album. The manager of the studio got word that Miles was looking for Herbie and that he was about call him. Herbie did not believe it, but was told that if Miles asked if he was with anyone, he was to say no and agree to what ever Miles said. To no surprise, Miles called and invited Herbie to become part of Miles' first great quintet. Upon first meeting,...

Mingus is arguing about music with his two wives Donna and Lee-Marie. He is trying to validate him leaving her. This part of Mingus' life is a significant part as it shows his complete devotion to music. Mingus is picking his musicians over his love life at this point. In addition to all of this, Mingus had unfortunately become a very large pimp by the time he had hit the peak of his career. From this, he very clearly had no respect for women, therefor none for his lover Donna or Lee-Marie. Mingus also attempts to tell them that he had put a significantly larger amount of time into learning music than she had, resulting in them both rejecting the idea of him following music. The event that Mingus was being invited too was his own welcome back party! This event is very typical of Mingus as he was best known for his anger and being unpredictable. This happened all throughout his career with all of the musicians he was with. His personality was really shown through all of the music ...

Essential Question: How does pop culture impact ones music? This essential question was extremely prominent throughout reading both biographies so far. With both musicians being black and building their careers in the 50s and 60s, in New York, pop culture had a huge influence on their music. The influence of pop culture is extremely important to a musician as a musician must follow the norms of the pop culture of the time in order to be successful. When it came to the 50s and 60s, being sharply dressed and playing straight ahead jazz was pop culture. So, this is what they did. The two of them grew up listening to this music, later learning it. This formed their styles and made them who they became. Being black at the time, it was expected that one would play swing and straight ahead jazz. As pop culture changed over time, Miles decided to follow it and Mingus stayed with what was "hip" in the 50s and 60s. The biggest significance of Miles' career to me is how he follo...

Essential Question: How does the way a musician is taught effect who he is later on as a musician, composer and businessman As I have now finished the Miles Davis Autobiography and am 200 pages into Mingus' Autobiography I have realized that each musician learnt music in a different way. This would make sense as both musicians came from a completely different background. Miles came from a wealthy background where is family treated him well and provided for him. Miles was surrounded by friends and good music at all times. Mingus on the other hand was very poor and was abused by his father. The abuse lead him to be confused and unable to socialize with people. Being wealthy, Miles was properly taught how to sight read music. He was also given a strong background on music theory. Growing up, Miles was surrounded by classical music and jazz. Mingus grew up with being taught music for results. He was never given proper training on sight reading and theory from his trombone teacher. Th...

Mingus 1-210 So far in the book, I have been learning about the early and mid life of Mingus. Growing up, Mingus was subjected to physical abuse and racism from those around him whilst growing up in Los Angeles.   The only positive thing that came from Mingus' life in his early years was his profound love for music which was given too him by his father when his father decided that Mingus needed to learn an instrument. The second instrument that Mingus picked was the Cello. The first was Trombone, but his father decided that Cello was a better instrument. Soon he began to take lessons with a local white music teacher named Mr. Arson. Mr Arson taught for instant results and not for long term success. In this specific quote, the narrator (god) talks about how Mr Arson taught Mingus how to use his ears and ignore reading sheet music. “Im sure mr arsenal hadnt any idea that his shortcut method would turn out to be great for jazz improvisation, where the musician listens to the soun...

I just had a revelation! The style of music that a musician plays reflects their personality and general attitude towards life. The style of that genre that they play reflects how they are feeling in that moment. Like angry blues when one is angry. Or smooth jazz if you are relaxed. Here is a great example of this, Two recordings from John Coltrane. One of which is a song called countdown which was recorded after a feud between Miles and JC. The other is a song called Namia which was recorded by Coltrane in a very relaxed state (unfortunately induced by the use of Heroin) Countdown - ANGRY JC Naima - CHILL JC

Quotation blog Miles Davis Autobiography  413-413 Briefly towards the end of this book, Miles takes a brief moment to talk about Jazz as a whole. He does this after a long segment on the different styles of music that erupted from the 60s and 70s. This period in musical history yielded a huge amount of change and the birth of a load of new genres in music. Miles talked about how he would hear these different styles of music and decide that me must have certain elements of it in his own music. In order to do so, he would learn them and fuse them to Jazz. The one complication of doing this, however, is that it changes both forms of music and once again creates its own style. With music being full of different emotions and feelings, a new feeling would be born evert time that he felt this. Miles takes a step back in the book to explain Jazz. "Jazz is something that I hear in my ear, jazz is an attitude." (Miles 344) When Miles said this, it made me immediately think of anot...

In my last quick burst, I featured a picture of Miles and Charlie. I then realized just how much older Charlie Parker was than Miles. For ages I have been told that you are as good as the people that you play with. With Charlie Parker being one of the best musicians from this era and Miles getting the chance to play with him until his death in 1955, I think this is what made Miles such a strong musician. 

I recently got told that when I play the guitar, I phrase and sound like a horn player. This interested me, because when I play other music styles like the blues, I get told that I sound like a blues guitar player. Then I came down to thinking about what I had been told and came to a realization. When I listen to jazz, I hardly listen to any jazz guitar players. I only ever listen to horn players like Miles. When listening to Miles in his early career, he sounds as if he is a saxophone player. I think that this is because he only ever listened to Charlie Parker at this time. You can really hear this when he was playing with Charlie. Here is a recording of Donna Lee that features miles davis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02apSoxB7B4

Essential Question: What is it that drives a musician to explore new ideas and possibilities? As I have nearly finished  Miles - The Autobiography by  Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, I have come across an answer to an essential question that I had on what drives artists to explore new ideas and possibilities. I have always wondered this because at times I have a hard time expanding my own musician ship to other ideas as I get stuck on old ones. It is people like Miles Davis who I always see as inventors and leaders in inventing new ideas for the music that they play. Through this book I have been able to find all of the key components that seem to have made Miles want to invent and create. The point that I am at in the book so far is when Miles is creating his new electronic music like Miles in the Sky and Bitches Brew. These two albums showcase Miles expanding his musical ideas and creating new forms of music and new ways to improvise. It appears that miles' inspiration co...

I started reading Minguses Biography today. I was amazed by the first 20 pages! This guy had a completely different up bringing than Miles had. This might explain why he was such a different musician than Miles was. I wonder what my upbringing means when it comes to my musicianship.  In order to show the comparison here is a piece by Mingus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7CoJEyiSfE

Miles - The Autobiography Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe 300 pgs read Coming into the electronic age, Miles began hearing things that he had not heard in music before. With large advancements in electronic music gear, music was beginning to undergo a huge evolution with the invention of distorted guitar, electronic piano and more. As I had said earlier, Miles' thing was to keep his music "fresh" or sounding new. The idea of incorporating new sounds into his music seemed like a great idea for him to take on. Working on an album with his pianist at the time Herbie Hancock, he had decided to take a step in a new direction and work with electronics. It was at this time too that Herbie had already been experimenting with the keyboard. Through this, Miles wrote the album Miles In the Sky. This album would also later be categorized as Fusion opposed to Jazz due to its fusion of jazz to modern music. "It was on this recording date that Herbie first played the electric p...

After playing my weekend gig at Brown Sugar By The Sea in Newburyport this weekend, I made a huge connection to something that I had read in Miles' Book. Last week I spent a lot of time studying Miles' playing and noticed just how much space he incorporated into his improvisation. This is something very prominent in the playing of a lot of the musicians from Miles' era. After reading a lot on what society for musicians was like at this time, I can see why. All these guys did was play music together. They played enough that it became their second form of communication. When human beings talk, unless you are a chatterbox, we tend to put space into our phrases. Miles seems to incorporate this heavily into his improvisation. I tried doing this at my gig this weekend and found it to be an extremely useful tool. Instead of thinking about playing jazz lines, I tried to voice my improvisation to be as if I was talking. This approach forced my playing to be really melodic and have a...

I realized a few days ago about the significance of picking your audience when it comes to music. Miles was really good about this, not to mention he talked about it quite a lot throughout his book. He talks about incorporating different musicians from the current era that he was producing music. The significance of this is that the youth of that time would be much more likely to listen to his music. Like today for example. Most people listen too Lil Punk and a whole other "lil" rappers and so on. Well say if one of my favorite musicians like roy hargrove had lil punk on one of his albums. That album would be extremely successful because people from my age would be attracted to it because of Lil punk and so on. Here is a video of Miles and a friend of mine Robben Ford playing a song called Blues and Maze. Robben was a monster in the music scene during the 80s and 90s due to his success with Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Kiss and more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRna...

Miles Davis Autobiography   By Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe Pages 140-220 Going into this quote, Miles is talking about a tour that he did with Milt Jackson, the vibraphone player, and his band. Due to the size of Jackson's vibes, they did not go on tour with a piano player. This, for most musicians, would have been a problem as the piano is essential when it comes to an accompanying instrument. An accompanying instrument is one that provides a foundation and the chords for the improvisor to base his solo off. Miles on the other hand saw this as an opportunity to try something new. "Playing without the piano freed up the music. I found out on this tour that sometimes a piano got in the way, that you didn't need it when you wanted to get a looser, freer sound." (Miles 158) Miles found that without a piano, he was able to get a looser, freer sound. This discovery was a huge influence on a lot of his future music, as well as a lot of other musicians. I think the l...

Throughout the book, Miles mentions many times that Dizzy Gillespie was very well known for his crazy personality on stage. Miles states that this is what he used in order to get the audience to like him and respect his music. While Miles disliked this, I think that it is an extremely useful tool to have. I have been to many different concerts. My favorite shows are the ones where the band interacts with the audience and makes it feel as though you are there in person and not watching a video of the performance. I can certainly say from my experiences being in a band, the audience seems to enjoy it when you interact with them much more than if you don't. This shows me that not all of the stuff that Miles says is the best stuff. Here is a crowd selfie from a show that we headlined in North Andover. We were talking to the crowd and then got them pumped up about taking a crowd selfie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M75iYZ-_Jg Just a quick post about this video that I found of modern musician Kenny Garrett and Miles Davis. In this live performance, Miles makes use of electric piano and electric guitar that would not have been available in the early stages of jazz. Most jazz musicians from that era had ended their career due to the loss of popularity in standard jazz. Miles just fused modern music with jazz and it worked! Listen to how awesome this recording is!

Miles Davis Autobiography   By Miles Davis     Pages  read - 1-140 Miles is explaining the critics and news reporters that many of the artists in New York would have to deal with each day. Unfortunately, these people did not like Miles as he explains it had to do with his attitude and how he did not suck up to these white reporters so that they could give him a good story. This was unnecessary thanks to the hard work that previous black musicians did in order to pave a path for equality and fair treatment of future black musicians. Miles talks about how Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie worked hard in the early days in order to get the things that they wanted. By doing this, they made a large name for themselves and created a music called bebop in jazz that no other musicians were playing at the time. With the both of them being black, the music remained in the black community until later on, when white musicians like Stan Getz and Bill Evans began to copy this mu...