Rock Zone

Woo-hoo!

Today's a great day - because it's the day when I've posted my 35th song. This post has a song that you might consider "new and different", but I need to put something here other than just classical and jazz music. If you've looked at the archives on the bottom of this page, you might say that I have 41 posts, but 6 of those were Heads Up posts which are just talking, pretty much. They don't have any music to go with them, although they often tell you to listen to music.

But we'd better get back to the topic of the song itself. You think it will be about a place that's filled with rocks, right? You'll see piles of them wherever you walk, from pebbles to mountains. You'll always be running around so you don't get caught under an avalanche of rocks. And it'll really hurt under your shoes, right? When you finally smash your way through the stone door (while this song is playing), you'll remember to never come to Rock Zone again.

Well, I'm talking about a different type of rock.

Summertime

This.

This is the moment you've all been waiting for. (drags out the "all" like one of those announcers on TV)

Especially since - oops - I missed last week's post.

You've been waiting for this since Somebody Loves Me.

Now I'm going to give you the really big cliff-hanger (especially if you're reading this on my website, because you'll have to click the keep-reading button). You've been waiting for one of the greatest composers in history (at least that's my opinion, but others will disagree).

You've been waiting for.....

I Want.....

You might think that I'm being delinquent on giving you the old songs - but when I played them 3 years ago, it's hard to think of something to write about them. And today, I didn't even have an old song on my Posting Schedule (which reminds me, I should start planning out my posts for the next few months). And last night, I was already in a pinch. I either had to record and post a song in the last two hours of my evening, or the first two hours of this morning. So, I decided to just throw in one of the songs I'd already written and get on with it.

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.)