Tune writing

After much noodling, in space and over jazz standards, I ventured into doodling a jazz tune. Amazingly, my teacher and Jazz Dad, Rick Garn, at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton, thought it was a Woody Shaw tune. I'm often pretty gullible, so I don't really know if he was just teasing me, trying to boost my confidence, or was actually telling the truth. In any case, we ended up recording it together with some of my fellow students at the college. Rick played his alto sax. It is a precious memory. Here is a recent remake of that tune: I continued doodling with the jazz tune thing and came up with a somewhat spaced out composition that had a 14 bar form and a few unstandard chord changes. This tune I managed to record with Andrew Glover on keyboard, Gregg Dunstan on bass, and Tom Foster on drums. I played my flugelhorn, which quickly became my favourite horn. I love the mellow spacey sound.
Having learned a few music business tricks from Tommy Banks in his Music business class at Grant MacEwan, I shopped my tune around and managed to win a University radio station contest, get a few reviews written in local newspapers and get some airplay. John Beaudin at CKXM was the first to play my tunes on his new age/space jazz program. I called the prize winning tune "Whitemud", after the little creek that I lived by where I used to walk.
Jamie Philp played bass and all the spacey background sounds on this one, and helped record and produce it as part of the prize I won for the CJSR real to reel contest. I played my flugel and classical guitar. I call it Blue as the Sky.

Doodlers and Noodlers

"Artists" doodle. Musicians noodle. But can a musician be an artist?

A composer of music usually writes down his creations, so again, he becomes a doodler, abstracted from his medium of sound. I studied classical guitar for some years, but abandoned it for jazz trumpet and flugelhorn, because I wanted to explore more of a creative process with my instrument.

I'm grateful for the time I've spent basking in the inspiration of Ponce, but sometimes I think the much glorified act of "interpreting" a composer's music by musicians is no more creative than a house, or sign painter, worse, painting by numbers. There is a lot of room for high craft, but truly creating something new musically, not substantially. For me, it makes a wonderful solution to explore the world of music through improvisation. To create music spontaneously, viscerally connected to the instrument being "played", as intimate and naked as my breath. Breathing my soul into every moment. If I can only bring a Zen like inspired mindfulness to every moment of music, calling a more profound muse from the depths to guide each musical nuance. I've read of Zen monks practicing their meditation with brush in hand, the gestures of every brushstroke an expression of their internal state; true mindfulness indicated by the purity of forms drawn by their hands, on the paper before them.

Yah right! Sounds great, but in the end we want a picture of "something", and a song needs a melody, which necessarily, at some level, is contrived. The compositional contrivance I used in this little improvisational exploration employed a "pelog" scale interpreted from Balinese gamelon music. Also, I over-dubbed my trumpet 3 more times over the original improvisation, to provide even more opportunities to create sounds that hinted at harmonic structure, though I don't really call this a tune.

Last Post for Rememberance Day

I joined the military as a musician in November 1983 and at some point, that I no longer remember, I started playing "Last Post" for Rememberance Day ceremonies. I remember at first, needing a tiny photocopy of the music for Last Post taped on to my trumpet lyre (a small attachment for holding music while marching). Now, the music is tattooed on to my memory, and in no small way, a precious part of my identity as a musician. The performance of Last Post has certainly provided some of my most profoundly memorable musical experiences with the military.

This year's performances have been particularly profound. I fell on the opportunity to play Last Post for the Nicola Goddard memorial concert on Nov. 7, which was organized by Jean-Louis Bleau, involving a large combined choir and the U of C orchestra performing at St. Mary's Cathedral a composition by Welsh composer, Karl Jenkins, called "The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace". By the time that it came time for me to play Last Post, in the deafening silence provided by the composition at that moment, in that cavernous cathedral, I was dizzy from hyperventillating in my brave attempt to breathe slowly and deeply to remain calm and prepared. I played it out loud and clear and with all the air that my lungs could muster.

On November 10th, I was given the honour, for my second time, to play Last Post for a Spanish immersion elementary school in Canyon Meadows. This time the choir consisted of children singing Rememberance Day songs in Spanish and English. It was another emotional event in a completely different way.

Finally, on November 11th at the 11th hour, it was my honour to perform Last Post at the Museum of the Regiments, standing at attention on the dias in front of 12,000 participants. Simple dutiful trumpet calls packed with powerful emotion. It has been a great honour to "serve" musically in this way.