Archives for November 11, 2008

You”ve been at your horn for a while now, a few years even. You know your scales and arpeggios in every key, and you can rip through them at blistering speeds. Licks and patterns? You”re a relentless consumer. But you still can”t play an improvised solo worth an unkey”s munkle. What gives?\r\n\r\nHow do you make all that technique actually count? What”s the missing link that can help you connect the building blocks of jazz improvisation and turn them into a house?\r\n\r\nMemorize jazz solos.\r\n\r\nNotice that I didn”t even use the word “transcribe.” Transcribing solos is a hugely profitable discipline, one I need to practice more of myself. But whether you start with the harder, do-it-yourself transcription route or with someone else”s written transcriptions, memorizing the solos of great players is the ticket to freeing up your fingers, educating your ears, developing your musical instincts, and weaving all three together into increasing spontaneity.\r\n\r\nI remember when the light clicked on for me. I was studying jazz in college and feeling just plain frustrated with my inability to play anything more than the most basic blues. Then one day I picked up a book of Charlie Parker solos. This was in the pre-Charlie Parker Omnibook days, but that didn”t matter. A Bird solo is a Bird solo, which is to say a study in musical brilliance, no matter what its source.\r\n\r\nAnyway, I started working on “Oop-Bop-Sh”Bam,” just trying to play the darn thing. Then, for some reason, I decided to start memorizing it. And with that first effort, I gained a small piece of musical vocabulary.\r\n\r\nMany years have passed since that time, and I”ve long forgotten the solo. But I”ve worked on plenty of other solos by Bird and other great jazz musicians. When the Omnibook first came out, I snapped up a copy and started memorizing solos on Rhythm changes. “Moose the Mooch,” “Anthropology,” “Thriving from a Riff”…plus, of course, other solos. Lately I”ve been revisiting “Thriving from a Riff,” working at memorizing it in all twelve keys.\r\n\r\nHey, it”s a goal, right? And whether I ever master that solo in all twelve keys, I”m already noticing the payoffs.\r\n\r\nI can already hear some of you protesting, “I don”t want to sound like someone else. I want to sound like me.”\r\n\r\nLet me reassure you, you”ll develop your own voice. And you”ll acquire a voice worth hearing a lot sooner by following the time-tested tradition of emulating the elders. It”s true of any creative discipline. In writing, you don”t invent another language, not if you hope to actually communicate with people. No. What you do is, you read the works of great writers analytically, and out of what you learn, you begin to develop your own way with the English language.\r\n\r\nSame with music. The best way to sound like yourself, not Bird, is to play enough Bird for your own personality to rise up through him. And what are you really afraid of? Suppose you do wind up sounding exactly like Charlie Parker for a season. Explain to me, please, why that would be such a terrible thing.\r\n\r\nIn order to master jazz, you”ve got to go through the masters. That”s how it works. Doing so is challenging, but it”s also fun.\r\n\r\nSo get with it. You”ll be glad you did.

Yesterday”s system produced a tornado, but it wasn”t in central Texas, where most chasers had set their sights. It was in extreme southwest Kansas, where a compact cold core setup kicked up a brief but impressive wedge. Chaser Mike Umscheid saw the opportunity, took a chance, and bagged his first November tornado. It was a nice one. You”ll find Mike”s analysis of the conditions and some crisp photos of the tornado and parent low-top supercell in the November 10, 2008, chase account in his High Plains Drifter blog. \r\n\r\nCold core setups have been intriguing me increasingly since I first heard of them. My first cold core chase on February 24, 2007, with Kurt Hulst, Dave Diehl, and Daryl Winger, netted us a tornado east of Kansas City near Holden, Missouri, during what we had thought was just the long ride home from a bust chase farther west. I”m not sure whether ours was a classic cold core tornado, since we were well east of the center of the low, but I don”t know what else you”d call it. Where we stood, the air was chilly enough to frost my breath; yet a couple miles to our southwest, a tornado was in progress. Check out Kurt”s chase log for that day, complete with a video clip of the tornado.\r\n\r\nMike Umscheid”s account sounds familiar. It also sounds impossible. Inflow temps of around 53 degrees, with a dewpoint of 47 degrees–not exactly storm chasing nirvana, right? But frigid upper levels set up the conditions necessary for good buoyancy, and that, combined with a nicely curved hodograph, did the trick. Mike called the shots beautifully for his chase. Way to go!\r\n\r\nCold core 500 mb closed lows are creatures unto themselves. I hope to gain a better understanding of what makes them tick, and to chase a few more of them in the future. There”s no question that they produce.