Horace Silver and Nica’s Dream

One of my favorite jazz artists is Horace Silver.  He is, of course, a great master of the piano with a secure place in jazz history. He has put together incredible groups of musicians and has an immense discography whose recordings number among the very best in jazz.

The gift that he has given to us that I want to focus on is the body of jazz compositions he has created and have become “jazz standards”.  These tunes are fun to play, challenging in their changes, pushed ahead the harmonies of jazz, and provide choice materials for jam sessions and gigs.

Nica’s Dream

This is perhaps my favorite Horace Silver song, and also one of my all time jazz favorites.  The song has an interesting modified calypso type of beat that is fun to groove on.  Then the bridge moves to swing.  However, the first two measures of the bridge are in a two beat backbeat on a bass pedal at the 5th.  I am a bass player and I love kicking these notes to drive the transition.  In fact every time I play this song when I hit the bridge I experience a bit of pure joy.

The first time I played this song was in the middle of “downstate” Illinois.  I was still attending the U of I at the time,and a jazz group of friends were taking a little road trip to play a wedding reception.  As a side note, these guys also played at my wedding a year or so later.  During the course of this “gig” we were reading out of fake books (didn’t even have a Real Book,yet.)  and the piano player called Nica’s Dream.

As I was playing it and listening to others in the group, it became apparent quickly that this was no ordinary standard from a fake book.  This was something special and I was in love at first hearing.   We had brought a reel-to-reel tape recorder to the gig and for weeks afterward I re-listened to the song quite a few times.  Then just I had to get the Horace Silver LP the contained it: Horace-Scope featuring Blue Mitchell and Jr. Cook out front.

This is the original recording:

 

Also, see how guitarist Wes Montgomery handles it.

 

As recently as this weekend, we had a jam session on Sunday where Nica’s Dream was the hit of the day.   The sax player said, hey tune is a whole lot of fun.  I still felt my bit-o-joy- at the bridge, some 35 years later.

Book: Performing in the Zone by Jon Gorrie

Performing in The Zone This is an awesome book that really helps with performance anxiety and a host of other issues that hold me back from performing at my full potential.  I wish I had this book, when I had my “big” audition for bass player in the National Symphony in Washington, DC back in the late 70s.  At that time I was studying (post-college) with Steve Brewster the Principal Bassist at that time. By the way Steve was an incredible human being and musician and will be the subject of a future article.  I had prepared well for this audition and had mastered the list of orchestra bass parts indicated.  I also had prepared a solo piece that I could play beautifully at my lessons. Steve proclaimed that I was well prepared for the audition and wished me well at my lesson prior to the audition.

I got to the audition with my bass and music.  I was escorted to the waiting rooms below the stage.  I encountered a large number of bassists all working away and practicing their parts and sounding very proficient and capable of passing the audition. Some had the parts all memorized and could wiz through them at fast tempos.  I was completely blown away by this and started feeling woefully inadequate.  I got quite nervous and began feeling high anxiety about my own audition when the time was to come.  I was completely intimidated at this point.

Finally, I was called to go up on stage.  I took my bass up a set or two of stairs fairly petrified.   When I got on the stage, as expected, there was a screen between myself and the audience where I knew that members of the bass section and other symphony people, including possibly Rostropovich himself.  Although later I found out that he only comes to the finals.

On stage with me was a member of the orchestra, who directed me to play each of several orchestra parts including Mozart 40th, Beethoven’s 5th, Prokofiev 9th. I was able to play and get through them, but I was so nervous that I am sure that I was rushing the tempos, smearing though some of the 16th note runs to say the least.  When I was done, I went back down the stairs feeling about as badly as I have every felt. The auditions were in rounds of 10 bass players where at the end of the round, they indicated who in the group made it to the finals.  It was some small comfort that no one in our group of 10 was selected for the finals.  It didn’t really make me much feel better.  I left the hall feeling a huge disappointment in how I had completely blown the audition by being so ultra-nervous that I couldn’t play up to the level I was prepared for.  Even at my best, I might not have been selected, but I was decimated by my poorer than normal performance. This was so far away from “Performing in the Zone”.

A few weeks later, I had an audition to be the paid principal bass player for a local symphony, and I was much improved at that audition and even got the gig.  For years afterward, I passed many auditions for groups, and had a wonderful experience playing.  However, to this day I am still uncomfortable with auditions.  The techniques in Jon’s book, Performing in the Zone have already helped me and have motivated my to use this technique in my work environment when preparing for meetings. in addition to performing music.  Thanks, Jon.  Here is a clip from his website below.

You can find and buy the book here, I highly recommend it.

Performing in The Zone

From Jon’s Website:

What is The Zone?

The Zone is intangible. It is that ideal – that place – that state of mind – where performing is easy and comfortable, where your actions are efficient and effortless, and when your results are up to or even exceed your previous expectations.

We’re all performers…

Actors, musicians, public speakers, dancers, models, sports-people, entertainers, and singers – we’re all performers, and we’re all in the public eye.

We receive training, practise for countless hours, enter the performance environment – whether it be the stage, studio, sports field or catwalk – and sooner or later, for better or for worse, we get affected by the performance situation.

Performance arousal

We experience performance arousal – a phenomenon that can get us into The Zone and improve our level of performance, or cause performance anxiety making us “crash and burn” under the spotlight.

Most of us have experienced both the positive and negative effects of performance arousal but few of us know why or how we can control it – until now…

Questions…

So what really is performance arousal? How can you better understand it? How can you control your performance arousal and use it to your advantage, instead of letting it control you by turning your legs into jellyfish in the performance arena?

…and answers

With the descriptions of performance arousal, the techniques for controlling it, and The 12 Week Performance Success Programme explained in the book Performing in The Zone, you too can unleash your true performing potential and achieve optimal results in your chosen field of performance.

You too can perform in The Zone!

Backcycling Guitar Chords

Backcycling is a cool term that basically means to take a music idea and move it around the “cycle of fifths” to play it in all keys.  Too many musicians, myself included sometimes, will learn a lick or a chord or even a whole song  in only one particular key.  This is very limiting and falls short of mastery.  Playing in all 12 keys prepares you playing songs in keys that you are not as comfortable in.  It also comes in handy when you are performing with a vocalist.  Vocalists choose keys that best fit their voice. 

I had a real-life experience that was highly motivating in this regard.  I was playing a gig with a regular trio gig of mine, but when I showed this particular night, there was a singer to perform with us.  In the first set things were going pretty well and even though she had some non-standard keys, we were handling it. Then she called Girl from Ipanema. Now, we all know this tune very well in the key of F.  And frankly this song has no default alternate key and none of us had probably ever played it in a different key.  So we start the song and for the A section we have it nailed in the other key.  Then we hit the bridge. 

Both the piano player and myself completely bungled the chords and the song went into  a mess.  The poor singer kept trying to stay with her melody, but the musical  result was a temporary disaster.  We did OK on the changes for the next choruses, but the damage was done.  The set has only a couple of songs left and we completed those without incident.  The vocalist never said a word, left the gig at that point, with more sets remaining. We finished the gig with just the trio.   We felt do bad for the singer and we had no one to blame but ourselves!

In the following video, my good friend Greg Neuzil will take the Backcycling concept to Dominant Seventh Chords.  These chords are based on root positions with the root being on the 6th or 5th strings.  Playing on each and then dropping down 2 frets, you can repeat this pattern eventually getting to all keys. This video has had nearly 1,000 views on YouTube. I hope you find it helpful.