My year with jazz
Bad news: the recordings I’ve uploaded were snippets from a voice memos recording. They’re terrible quality.
Good news: the recordings all showcase the amazing Alex Posmontier on piano so there’s that!
TLDR I’ve been paying this dope pianist named Alex to accompany me while I’ve attempted to teach myself how to sing jazz this year. This is the recording I’m most proud of:
And this is the recording of Samara Joy which is how I came to know the tune. Your ears will thank you.
Samara Joy alone warrants a blog post for the future. If you don’t know her, you should fix that.
My 2023 started with the resolution of “do more music stuff”. To non-musicians I consider myself a musician. To professional musicians, I consider myself a hobbyist. I’ve gone farther into classical piano and choral singing than most hobbyists, and I made some money along the way. But I didn’t pursue a music education. There’s a lot more to that story but if you’re reading this you’re probably in the circle of people who have heard me wrestle with my musical identity for years.
At some point I decided to challenge myself to stop the broken record and accept that I’m a musical person. I could spend time ruminating about a title or I could resolve to do music stuff again. So I decided I would get a jazz piano teacher and fulfill this dream of making Nina Simone-esque music, inserting classical music on top of swing.
A jazz piano teacher was about a mile from my house and so it began. Or so I thought. Turns out that wrestling with my musical identity wasn’t the only thing that was holding me back. After years of classical music training, I couldn’t get out of my head. It only took a grand total of 3 piano lessons before I was dreaming about the new techniques I was learning all night.
Maybe music blogging would scratch the itch? No need for a practice regimen when I could learn about new-to-me music and dump my thoughts into the ether. Enter the “RS Top 100 Challenge”, the start of this blog. That endeavor was well and good, but it didn’t satiate my desire to perform. (It’s still ongoing, just not holding myself to the aggressive Julie & Julia time box).
I reached out to my piano teacher and it probably went something like this:
“Hey uhhh so I think I have more of a desire to sing jazz and do vocal arrangements of stuff rather than learn piano. Can I just pay you to play while I sing scream and figure it out?” He was all for it and we were in biz.
This is the first recording I have from August 14 where I’m attempting Nature Boy. If you need something to cringe at, give it a listen.
Flash forward four months to December 18. Here’s the latest recording of Nature Boy.
The smile on my face as I’m typing this is so huge, because today is the first day I’ve played back some of my lessons and I’ve not wanted to hide in a hole! I can hear the difference in my relaxation and control.
This was all achieved by showing up at Alex’s house and singing twice a month. No pressure to gig or practice incessantly. No recital at the end of the year. Just investment into the time and space to be creative. Now that showing up has proven to me that I can make improvements, I’m pivoting to a new place of wanting to work towards something— a session, a gig, and holiday EP for next year. Whatever! Something!
And I hope the six readers of this blog will do the same. Pick a thing, throw some time at it, record some data along the way, and wow yourself with your progress. Share it with me so I can support you.
Cheers to continued creativity in 2024. Here’s a snippet of us having a laugh over swinging Auld Lang Syne.
