Tim Price Bloggin' For D'Addario Woodwinds- Bringing the you...into the music.

 Tim Price Bloggin' For D'Addario Woodwinds- 
  Bringing the you...into the music.

The point here is to emphasize what Rilling calls the "architecture" of the music. For example, the way Pablo Casals varied the tempo according to what he was trying to convey. The words , You Got to Be Original, Man!Come from Lester Young.The quote said it all. Hopefully, what's going to be remembered, the present living person whoever it is, whether it's Casals, Bach, Coltrane or Lester Young in the context of the art form, its tradition, its future, its present, and that whole mixture together. I have great respect for the "tradition," the rules, and playing it within context and everything, I think it's great, but…what are YOU creating as an offering.Try to think the term "syntax" , which means a vernacular, a way of speaking. This music is speech and dialect. And there is a way of speaking. A common form and feeling.


The vibe of a sax player who walks the bar and a guy cross legged in India in a trance blowing –It’s all the same- they BOTH are after the same thing. It’s…that thang…that place the music goes. Like that groove that exists in R &B AND Jazz and Indian ragas.In essence, we really have something called the language, the syntax, the vernacular, and it's immediately transferable to personal creation anyway. So in jazz, the art form itself says you're supposed to individualize it , that's the point . All that's understood, but your goal is not to repeat or to objectify this thing. It's to take it and have it be a living thing that you put your personality on. The goal sould be- to try to bring a spiritual dimension to the music.Be it some booty shaking funky jazz, a swinging standard or your agenda. I feel that the music speaks absolutely louder than any dogma, any words can speak at all. And in the end, the music is connected- there's a great book by Hazrat Inayat Khan of the Sufis. It's about how music ties into the "realms" and everything like that. It's just an understood, it's a given.

In my thinking it is an artist's duty is to try to get in touch with that vibe through his work.Not to get some in the shadow of another player that it's just silly- or worse.Inspiration is one thing- being a copy cat is just that.Do you want to cop Jagger or Sonny Rollins so much that when folks hear or see you they say " Oh yea, he stands like Jagger, or oh...he sounds sorta like Rollins. Be the best YOU you can be- live with it.It's the work and it's the art that will do. SO.. it's freedom, individual creativity ! Nobody can be a better YOU than YOU. It is obviously possible, as many do, to improvise within certain stylistic or other constraints.<> While this is perfectly valid, and while it transcends such constraints, such as simplicity vs complexity, tonal vs atonal, intellectual vs intuitive, and so on. A step towards music-making where all possibilities can be genuinely embraced.There is a strong sense in which this really is playing music. Approached like this, it unlocks the natural, spontaneous creativity within each participant who lets the process flow deep and operates simultaneously on many levels. This is a very liberating experience and is often found to be therapeutic as well. It feels good to start from zero, or just be you. So this is what's going on now, what I'm thinking about. Lester Young is right. I hope you enjoy it-

Peace and goodwill to you all, Tim Price