listening for music

OW Oshkosh residency

2010-01-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

I had a great time working with students at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh in December, 2009. Special thanks to professor Marty Robinson for the great hospitality and for building such a great jazz program. It was delightful to play with the band, chat with the music business class, teach a few lessons and hang with the cats after the concert! The only downside was the blizzard raging outside limited the audience. Those that did attend certainly earned their stripes!

Carswell Songbook now available online

2010-01-06T13:50:00.000-08:00

Ok, this took longer than expected. Finally, we have published all the songs for Carswell. It's available as a free download at http://www.tingjing.com/tg/pdf/TomGullion_Carswell_Fakebook.pdf or just click the image below. Note that it's rather large - a 66MB file!

Carswell is up on iTunes - get yours now!

2009-11-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

Here we go. Carswell is now available on iTunes.

If you already own a copy, please write a review and let others know what you think about the music.

Click here to travel to iTunes.

Carswell is up on CDBaby - get yours now!

2009-10-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

The new record, Carswell, is up on CD Baby. Please get yours now.

Or if you already have a copy, feel free to write a review.

Thanks for your support!

Hyde Park Jazz Festival 2009 MP3s

2009-09-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

I had the great pleasure of performing with Ernie Adams at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival 2009, 3rd annual. It's a really great festival worth attending. Great location, great music, really well organized.

Here are a few MP3s of our set. Musicians are Tom Gullion (saxophone), Tim Whalen (piano), Larry Gray (bass), Ernie Adams (drums) and Juan Picorelli (percussion).

Carswell (Tom Gullion)

For Chick (Tim Whalen)

One Look (Larry Gray)

Asiatic Raes (Kenny Dorham)

Carswell video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LmHqcMNDWY

Hyde Park Jazz Festival - Sat, Feb 26th, 3:30pm

2009-09-23T21:36:00.001-07:00

This Saturday, Sep 26th, is the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. I'll be performing with drummer Ernie Adams, pianist Tim Whalen and bassist Larry Gray at Experimental Station at 3:30pm. Please join us.

Experimental Station is here (map).

The rest of the festival is worth checking out. A great collection of Chicago musicians and it's free. :-)

More details are available at http://www.hydeparkjazzfestival.org/

While you're there, be sure to tweet using #jazzlives and announce your support for live music!

Unschooling

2009-09-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

My evolving approach to improvisation and composition has been a process of "unschooling." I don't know what else to call it. Here I'll try to explain...

I spent so much of my time studying harmony and worked diligently to understand it from multiple perspectives. Indeed, there remains a lot more to study. No one could possibly finish that task.

However, the music that speaks to me deeply is not harmonically complex. It is more earthy, more soulful, more spontaneous than we usually associate with complex music.

I also noticed that when confronted with complex chords in music musicians tend to bury their noses in the printed music and play less emotionally.

Then comes trumpeter Woody Shaw with the answer.

His music almost always sounds organic and soulful. Yet his tunes have harmonic complexity and an incredibly natural emotional curve. I really admire his work.

Crafting tunes that have all these attributes has been my goal of late. My latest recording, Carswell, comes close but there's a lot more work to do. Meanwhile, you'll find me working on unschooling my craft and getting to it.

Carswell is ready. Soon to be released!

2009-06-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

My new disc, Carswell, is back from manufacturing! All the behind-the-scenes stuff of releasing a record is happening fast and furious. In those few idle minutes, I plan to make updates of progress and release some supplemental material: photos, background info and even a PDF of the music.

The music on this album is a huge step forward for me. I really worked hard on the compositions, taking musical ideas from my past experiences and sculpting them into something new. Those compositions were modified after a few live performances to further fine-tune the emotional landscape of the piece.

Here's a teaser jpg of the disc cover:

Mellowing demo

2008-10-28T08:45:00.001-07:00

I'm considering putting together my new project "in the open" (as it's called in software development). I don't mean that it's "open source" as in FREE but rather that I'd like to include YOU in the process of creating this project.

I've already posted a few photos from our session in August. Perhaps you'd like to see and hear some of the source material and listen to the transformation that takes place when a composition comes to life. So here I'm posting a new tune, Mellowing, as both a score and a link to the demo MP3. Once I finish mixing the "final" track I'll post here about where to get it.

The demo MP3 can be found at http://www.tingjing.com/tg/demos/mellowingdemo.mp3

Thanks for participating!
Tom

Feel free to drop a comment or suggestion about how you'd like to see this take place.

Download now or preview on posterous

Mellowing.pdf (133 KB)

Posted by email from tomgullion's posterous

Photos from Aspect Jazz recording session in Aug, 2008

2008-09-04T14:54:00.001-07:00

We had a great recording session in August, recording some brand new music. I'm working on the tracks now in my studio but wanted to share some photos from the session. Richard Bock did an amazing job making us look good - in spite of the bizarre green-painted floor in the studio. The truth is that the studio is mainly a video studio where the green does a good job for masking the weather map (or other graphics) behind the person. However, for us, it left this odd green shading.

Anyway, the music turned out great. We played a gig in Madison the night before. Bopped up to Brett Huus' studio for the session and had great fun cranking out the music. Musicians included Tom Gullion (saxophone and alto flute), David Cooper (trumpet and flugelhorn), Tim Whalen (piano), Mark Urness (bass) and Dane Richeson (drums).

Tom Gullion Quintet - live in Madison, Wed Aug 20

2008-08-18T08:01:00.001-07:00

Tom Gullion Quintet - live in Madison, Wed Aug 20 at the jazz club in the Concourse Hotel

We're going into the studio to start a new project. Wed, Aug 20th we'll be previewing some of the material for the recording. Please come out and join us. It's sure to be great:

David Cooper, trumpet
Tom Gullion, saxophones and bass clarinet
Tim Whalen, piano
Mark Urness, bass
Dane Richeson, drums

Aspects in the studio

2008-08-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

We were wildly successful at the recent Driftless Jazz Festival 2008. The group chemistry was incredible: David Cooper on trumpet, Tom Gullion on saxophone, Tim Whalen on piano, Mark Urness on bass and Ernie Adams on drums. Almost everyone in the crowd (and even the musicians) were asking "Why aren't you guys touring?"

Well, I intend to fix that immediately. We're going into the studio in a couple of weeks to start a new recording and we'll be working out tour details soon. I'm even thinking about starting up a small ArtistShare-like site so you can subscribe and be a part of the process. I have some raw video footage of our performances at the jazz festival and I'll be posting excerpts here soon.

We'll be producing videos of our recording sessions and I'll even include charts as desired.

Peace be with ya!
Tom

Driftless Jazz Festival 2008

2008-05-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

Driftless Jazz Festival 2008 - a regional jazz festival based in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin

After last year's experiment, we've organized ourselves and plan to make this an annual event. This year the Driftless Jazz Festival will feature some great musicians from Chicago, Wisconsin and Minnesota. It's taking place this weekend: May 23rd through the 26th.

Friday, May 23
Jazz 101 - Understanding Improvised Music
Jam Session hosted by the Driftless Jazz Collective

7pm, Green Man Music Hall, Free

Saturday, May 24
Street Beat Blues - Ted Parrish Trio, Jim Schaffer

1pm, Viroqua Food Coop, free
Becoming-listener (again!) in Ghana with Davu Seru

3pm, VIVA Art Gallery, free
Tom Gullion Quartet featuring Ernie Adams, Tim Whalen
David Cooper and Kelly de Haven

7pm, Green Man Music Hall, $10
JFar Coretet Poetry Slam

9pm, Driftless Cafe, free

Sunday, May 25
Jazz Brunch with Christie Knapp

10am, Drifless Cafe
INTOIT
Project Fourthstream with Davu Seru, Rich MacDonald

7pm, Green Man Music Hall, $10

Monday, May 26
Ted Parrish Trio featuring Catherine Hall Parrish
Christie Knapp
Tom Gullion Quartet featuring Geoff Lowe and Rich MacDonald

1pm, Green Man Music Hall, $10

Futureproof - Tom Gullion Quartet

2008-03-06T10:57:00.001-08:00

Uptown - Freedomfest 2008

2008-03-06T10:01:00.001-08:00

Pure Essence - Freedomfest 2008

2008-03-06T10:00:00.001-08:00

Right On Time - Freedomfest 2008

2008-03-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

Mellowing from FreedomFest 2008

2008-03-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

Youtube's effect on jazz education

2008-02-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

I've been teaching a jazz history course at a local, private high school (www.yihs.net). It's an interesting challenge because it's open to all students - not just music majors.

As a way to make the music accessible to non-musicians, I've been playing a LOT of music from various youtube.com posts: early Bessie Smith, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, etc. What an amazing experience to be able to discuss the evolution of jazz and then show videos of the players. It really brings the whole topic to life.

I'm not claiming a big discovery here. Sure, it's a rather obvious thing to do. The reason I'm writing about it is the revelation to me: this was completely impossible just a few short years ago. I went to one of the largest music universities in the US but never saw any film footage of the jazz greats there. I remember the impact of seeing John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy on film - that was an incredible moment! Today, it's immediately accessible.

I wonder what the impact will be for all this immediate access to so much content. When working with young jazz bands, I've been suggesting they search youtube for any music they're playing. What a great thing to see and hear the original bands playing the tune. But also, possibly just as important, seeing similar age school groups playing as well. I remember how inspirational it was to come back from a jazz festival having heard other great bands. It was always a very quick lesson in how much more I needed to practice!

This is one of the positive stories about the good the Internet can provide. Well, as long as you don't show your students some of the obnoxious comments people sometimes post on youtube. Can't we all just behave ourselves?

2008-01-25T09:31:00.001-08:00

Freedomfest 2008 lineup announced

See
http://www.mccca.net/ for more details.

The Madison Center for Creative and Cultural Arts and the Overture Center for the Arts proudly present FreedomFest 2008, a one-day festival of creative jazz music for liberated souls on Friday, February 22 from noon to midnight at the Overture Center Lobby.

2:00---3:30 PM ||||| The People’s Drum Circle of Madison

3:45---4:45 PM ||||| Madison Area High School Jazz All-Stars

5:30---6:30 PM ||||| Tom Gullion Quartet featuring the great Ernie Adams on drums.

6:45---7:45 PM ||||| Jazz String Quintet with Jim Gailloreto

8:00---9:00 PM ||||| The Seekers ||||| Hanah Jon Taylor debuts a new international ensemble featuring Jobic LeMasson on piano, Tatsu Aoki on bass, and Reggie Nicholson on drums.

9:15---10:15 PM ||||| Douglas Ewart and Inventions ||||| Legendary member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) presents his 9-piece ensemble featuring Dee Alexander (Jazz Performer of the Year 2007, Chicago Tribune)

10:45--- Midnight -||||| Archie Shepp Quartet ||||| Jazz icon comes to Madison from Paris as the FreedomFest 2008 feature with Steve McCraven on drums, Willie Pickens on piano and Richard Davis on bass.

Tickets are on sale at B-Side Music at 436 State; Strictly Discs at 1600 Monroe Street, and MadCity Music Exchange at 600 Williamson Street. The cost is $35 general admission and $20 for students.

For additional information please contact the MCCCA at 251-2787 or 347-5988; and the Overture Center at 258-4141 for ticket information.

FreedomFest 2008

2008-01-03T12:21:00.000-08:00

This just in: the Tom Gullion Quartet (featuring drummer Ernie Adams) will be performing at FreedomFest 2008 in Madison, WI on Feb 22nd. This festival is put forth by Hanah Jon Taylor annually and this year's headliner will be none other than Archie Shepp! Obviously, we're very excited to be a part of it. More details will eventually we available at www.mccca.net.

I'll update details as they solidify. Save the date!!

Even Music Education is struggling

2007-12-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

I just wrote the previous post about the ailing music business and saw a related article about struggles in music education.

Sounds pretty grim. One stat from the article was in NYC there is one music teacher per 1,200 students (in 2006). Ouch. That basically makes music education an impossible task.

I don't want to appear unsympathetic to the public school system in NYC but I must admit it makes me even more grateful for the amazing music program at my childrens' school, Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School. The program here fosters a love of music from the very beginning and the children quite naturally produce great music on a weekly basis. The curriculum includes singing, playing recorders and eventually learning string instruments (violin, viola, cello and bass).

That's really great at face value. But there's more to it than that. The real beauty is the integrated way all subjects are studied and music is often part of the way children learn. This approach solves the core problems written about in the article. However, getting a public school system to radically shift its pedagogy...well, that's a tough one.

music biz 101++

2007-12-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

The future of the music business is getting a lot attention. It's thrashing and gasping for breath. Perhaps you saw the recent article in the New York Times. It extends an article on Wired magazine's site

I found both very interesting and they seem to make sense. The current music industry became so focused on producing silver dics (otherwise known as CDs) that they somehow missed the boat on digital distribution. This has been the subject of most of the writing about the "demise" of the music industry.

So David Byrne suggests we adopt a DYI attitude and take control of our music. Sounds great. Until you start digging deeper.

Just because we can all afford a laptop and necessary software to record the music and hack together a web site to distribute it doesn't really mean we'll all be producing great music. I've learned the hard way how difficult that task actually is. Recording engineers, mastering engineers, a good producer, graphic designers all have immense value in the process. The question remains open about how independent musicians can afford to pay all these people. Especially when the public seems to expect downloads to be free.

And even if we did raise enough money to do the project properly, I've never seen anyone suggest a solution for getting that music played on the radio. Just because you upload an amazing MP3 doesn't mean anyone will ever hear it.

Clearly, we have a lot of deeper thinking to do.

doubly popular Conn players

2007-12-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

Steve Goodsen includes this wonderful Conn sax ad at saxgourmet.com:

Hmm...learn to play a Conn saxophone and become doubly popular? Well, that's a fine idea. I'll let you know how it works out! :-)

Bitonal Concepts in Jazz Improvisation (edition 2007)

2007-12-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

by Tom Gullion - Dec 2007

Note: this article extends the concepts originally put forth at http://blog.tingjing.com/2006/09/bitonal-concepts-in-jazz.html

Tension and Release

Tension and release apply to all kinds of music. At the root of everything, great music finds elegant ways to resolve tension. So, it's quite simple: if you want to make great music, it's all about the resolution.

Of course there's nothing simple about that. It's where the mystery of music resides. But it's worth focusing our attention there for the rewards are great!

Current brain research keeps pointing out how the brain loves patterns. It brings you measurable pleasure (in the form of dopamine) to discover patterns in sensory input. The brain enjoys making connections, especially between things which weren't previously related. The idea is that your brain experiences pleasure when there's just the right amount of pattern recognition and new experience. If there is too much new information, it makes us tired. We all know how much energy it requires to study and retain new information. Conversely, we get bored when there's not enough new information. Listening to simple songs gets boring quickly.

So the mission of the musician is to provide just the right mix of recognizable vs. new material.

Given that it's impossible to find two listeners with exactly the same experiences, the mission just stated is bogus. You'll never be able to get the mix perfect for all your audience.

However, you may find you can give your experienced listeners profound joy by helping them create new connections in their listening experiences. I find the bitonal approach to be a good avenue toward that goal.

I'll get to more details about bitonal concepts in a few paragraphs. But for now let's consider it a way of layering musical structures. For instance, if we take a simple major triad and superimpose it over another major triad, we get a new sound. But the base elements are simple and well-known. Thus, we create a new connection: C Major + D Major = C Major with a sharp 11th.

This is a simple example but it lies at the heart of the concept. Now let's explore bitonal approaches in more detail.

Bitonal approaches

Pedal point

Pedal point suggests playing a chord with some alternate tone in the bass. Some of the more obvious and common examples are sus chords and intros or outros. The sus chord can be as simple as a minor 7th chord with the 4th in the bass.

Herbie Hancock's tune, Maiden Voyage, consists of only sus chords. The intro and outro in Miles Davis' version of Someday My Prince Will Come is a classic example of using the 5th as a pedal point.

There are numerous examples of this approach throughout all music, not just jazz. But jazz seems to have evolved this concept beyond a mere compositional device. The basis of this approach is to slightly alter the base chord with the alternate bass note or to provide harmonic interest over a static (or mostly static) bass. Wayne Shorter's This Is For Albert is a perfect example of this.

In general, musicians tend to approach pedal point in a fairly traditional way. One can just play the chord symbols (ignoring the bass) or play vertically (playing the chord/scales).

Bitonal

The basis of bitonal music is to have two tonalities occurring simultaneously. In the case of pedal point, it's really just a single chord happening over an alternate bass note. To me, bitonality is when we have two chords sounding together. In this case, we have a C Major triad and an E Major triad played together. I really enjoy these sounds because they produce harmonic tension in unique ways. And, even better, they don't have predictable resolutions.

You can play arpeggios which combine both chords and find some interesting melodic material.

Scalar

One of the evolutions of pedal point was to derive new scales which fit the more dissonant or abstract chord/bass note combinations. Woody Shaw used this approach in a lot of his tunes. Aebersold's Woody Shaw volume includes several with suggested scales. This approach adds melodic interest since the new scales often include interesting leaps and irregular scalar patterns.

You can follow the model Woody Shaw (and others) created or you can uncover your own scales for certain sounds. My favorite approach is to play the sound on the piano and very slowly discover the scale that already exists within the sound. You start with one note and follow your ears to the next one (half step, whole step, minor third or some other interval). This makes for a really fun practice session, does wonders to help develop your ears and often leads you into interesting melodic territory. Give it a try!

Combinatorial

What if we combined the above approaches? Hopefully we're making music with all this stuff. So we should learn the above concepts and be able to apply them where most appropriate and most musical. There are times when you want to simply use pedal point. There are cases when a true bitonal approach is what's need. Of course, this is obvious. I only write it to keep us aware of the goal: to make great music. Using whatever means necessary!

Superimpositional

Once you've assimilated all this, you may find that your hearing changes a bit. It's very possible that piano and guitar voicings may sound similar to some bitonal chord you've been working on. That's perfect! That's exactly what you want! When this happens, you can start to respond to traditional sounds in unexpected, new ways. Imagine you're playing a standard tune such as Have You Met Miss Jones? If someone (or something) plays an F# against the first chord (which is F Major) you'll be prompted to think bitonally. That's exactly what seems to have happened to George Garzone! Check out this recording four's and two's on NYC Records.. But the CD and you'll get a transcription of the cool, chromatic line he plays behind the melody. Garzone has invented a "triadic concept" which is reportedly coming out in a book in the future. Regardless of the name, the idea certainly looks and sound`s familiar!

Explorations

Here is a collection of suggested things to do to explore these concepts:

At first, consider how a bitonal maps to traditional chords/scales
move beyond that to exploring the sound
create hybrid scales elaborating the sound
look for patterns
look for melodic approaches
consider how to apply these melodic approaches over traditional harmony

Conclusion

We defined "bitonal" as a concept and looked at a few approaches. In the "real world" you'll find many players who blur the lines between concepts. It makes studying jazz more difficult but it makes listening to the music that much more interesting. I've heard musicians talk about using bitonality (or something similar) as a means to play "out." But that's a bit short-sighted.

If we really embrace this, we can stretch the bounds of harmony but maintain connection to our listeners' experiences. The whole point of music is to create something new based on something old. That's the way to get the listeners' brain engaged and keep them interested. In fact, if you're lucky you'll be giving the listener immense pleasure. Which is what makes music such a noble profession.

By simply combining sounds that our listeners already know about into a something new (aka bitonality), we can get pretty good results. Of course, this is simply a music device. It's no magic bullet. Making great music requires all you can give of yourself. Bitonal music might just be a good thing to have in your toolkit.