Old Adam

Hmmm... if you've heard this song before, you might think that the title doesn't fit the song. Although the composer of this song, William Bolcom, seemed to know a thing or two about jazz. I can see a lot of ii-V-I's and triplet sixteenth notes....oh, yeah. You might not know what those are. But you'd think that if this Adam is so old, he wouldn't be bouncing around so much, right? But if you haven't heard the song, I'll need to tell you a little about it first.

All Blues

I decided to post this song today....because I know you're lookin' for some jazz after all this time. Actually, how long has it been since I posted a jazz song? Oh yeah. It was only a week ago.

Joy Spring

It's time for another spring song. After the Red Ball surprise, you're probably wondering who wrote this song. (Maybe I should have given that song a different name. When you search for it on Youtube, you get a bunch of results about a game called Red Ball - which I've played before.) Joy Spring was written by a trumpeter named Clifford Brown, which is interesting because brown isn't usually a color you see a lot in spring. (Except on trees.)

When looking for things to add to this song, I found a recording of Oscar Peterson playing it on the piano. He said that Clifford Brown wrote the song and had died recently, which is why he was playing the song. But I knew that already because I had listened to Clifford Brown's recording of the song so I could learn it, and because listening is good for everyone.

Also, you might know now that I'm trying to learn songs by listening instead of just reading them off pieces of paper. It's better to use your ears instead of just your eyes.

Which is why I present to you...... Joy Spring!

Sonata in A Major #2

I know what you're about to say. "Isn't there already another Sonata in A Major?" It turns out that in the list of RCM songs I had for grade 9, there were two Sonata in A Majors - and I liked them both. (Usually, when I need to pick songs to learn from the RCM book, I listen to them all and write down the ones I like - which are usually several songs, with the exception of this year - and then pick a song from those. But this year when I'm picking ARCT songs, there's way too many songs for me to listen to them all, and I haven't found that many that I like.)

Take Five

Some of you might think that today is a special day if you do one of these 2 things: watch Star Wars, or play jazz. Instead of saying "may the force be with you," you say "May the fourth be with you." That applies to the first thing, which I've never done, but you know that I do the second thing.