Thursday, February 23, 2006

I have to listen to this stuff?

Well, my trio had a rehearsal yesterday. And I did the brave thing and recorded it. I hadn't really played piano since our last rehearsal 2 weeks before. I was feeling introspective, and wanting to play meditative ECM-new agey stuff... but I forced myself to practice some funk stuff. Which I'm not versed in. Yet. Now I'm listening to it... ugh. Yeah, there's some great stuff in there... in snippets and bits and pieces. Elliott and Jody sound great as always (but maybe they'd be critiquing themselves harder than I do if they heard it). Why on earth did I chose to repeat the same bass line over and over? Also doesn't help that the one mike was in the piano... so this repetitive stuff is rather unfortunately in the foreground.

But I guess this is the way to get better... to force yourself to pay attention to what could work... and more importantly, what doesn't. It's like in yoga class last week. My teacher was talking about not hoarding... not just hoarding possessions, but hoarding the idea of being attached to a way you do a yoga pose... or as in the case of ballet the next day, my coming to the realization that one port-de-bra (forgive me, I know no French... I'm not sure how to spell that) that I was doing so easily for so long really needed some major work... I had stopped thinking about it because it came easily... and was never getting better. And now, realizing that an improv that comes so easily, that I was so into in the moment, actually needs some major work... well ...wait... this section is actually pretty cool. I let go of the bass, and I'm adding some happy melodies over the funk drumming... cool stuff... worth working on. worth practicing... worth wanting to be better.