Joe's Avenue

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! Today, I'm playing a jazz song called "Joe's Avenue." This one was composed by Wynton Kelly as part of his "Vee Jay Studio Recordings." While learning the song, I was also able to transcribe his solo, so that I could play it myself. It reminded me of the importance of learning from other musicians. I hope you like listening to it!


Listen to the song here
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Last week, I could find St Louis on the map, but I don't know where Joe's Avenue actually is. It probably isn't anywhere. Perhaps you'll be the one to find it this time!

If I haven't made the value of filling your teacup with music clear, then you must have never scrolled to the bottom of the page. Maybe that means you've been so interested in listening to the songs that you've forgotten to go down, where it says, "Keep filling your teacup with music!" (That's right, I can know what the bottom of the page says before I've finished writing this.)

Listening isn't the only way to fill your teacup, though. I mentioned at the top that I transcribed a solo from the original recording of this song. You do have to listen to do this, but you also have to write down what the soloist is playing. 

Hopefully you don't write the notes on a 6-line staff--- oh, did I already say I wasn't going to keep using this 6-line staff? Okay, now you can remember to not believe everything that Liya says.

When it's your turn to improvise, you'd be able to use some of the melodies that you learned when you were transcribing. The point isn't just to take melodies that others have played, though. If you did that, you wouldn't be making any melodies yourself, so instead you could observe a pattern that the soloist is using. That way, you could still learn from what the soloist had played.

It's a bit like reading a book. If you found a sentence with some new words in it, you wouldn't only use that specific sentence when you wanted to apply your knowledge. You'd find another place where you could use those words. It seems like there's a lot of examples where music could be compared to a book, or notes could be compared to letters.

One of the best ways to become a better player is to learn from what other musicians have played - not just to take what they have played. So, if you think you could learn a lot from filling a shelf with books, then that's another reason to...

...keep filling your teacup with music!
~Liya