 This is the third in our Spring 2017 Office for the Advancement of Research Book Talk series, and this one is featuring our very own associate professor of music, Ben Bierman, in his band. I'd like to give our chair of art and music, Ben Lapidus, the opportunity to introduce Ben, Ben Gibson-Ben. As I think he knows Ben's work and expertise a little bit better than I do, but thank you all for coming, and please enjoy, Ben. This one's on, okay. Is this mic on? Barely. Maybe it could be a little louder, so I don't have to get too close. Okay, well, you know, usually at these types of things people, they list the degrees that the person has and their position and all that, so I'll do that in a moment, but, you know, there's a saying, there's just the University of the academia, the Irish Tower, there's also UCLA, the University of the corner of Lexington Avenue, which I hold in high esteem, and especially, I grew up about 50 blocks north of here, and definitely the University of the streets and the popular music, really valuable, amongst musicians, really valuable. So, Ben Bierman is a master of that school and a master of the academy as well. He's a composer, he is a scholar, he is a great musician. He has played with so many people who are on this flyer here. I think there are a couple of people that are heroes of mine that were left off of Oscar Hernandez, and I think Johnny Pacheco's not on here. Edie's Charcon also, for those of you who might know who Edie's Charcon is, Ben played with her too. Nobody knows who Edie's Charcon is in here. Wow, okay, great important singer, vedette, if you will. And Ben has been very active in the music scene here in New York City, Hawaii, California, elsewhere. There are a lot of things I learned from Ben about music that, in the short time that we've really gotten to know each other since he's come here, that have been really interesting, profound historical data and personal stories about different musicians. That kind of information is in this book, which is really interesting, because normally when you have a book about jazz and you're trying to teach people about jazz, it's really stayed and a little bit boring, and it's not necessarily based on a person's experience playing the music, listening to the music, and loving the music. And I think that's one of the things that's so great about this book is that love and that combination of experience as a musician and as a scholar just comes right through the writing, very accessible, very practical, and all about listening to the music. So it's a real accomplishment for him that this book is with Oxford. I think it's a huge statement. And the last thing I'll say is, as a musician, we're constantly trying to improve ourselves and improve our abilities and improve our understanding of the music. And I think that's, even though Ben has written this book, he's already working on another book right now. And it's going to be something special as well. And in the process of writing these books, there's a certain amount of learning that goes on. So that is to say that we're always going to be students as much as we are professors and players and so forth. And that's something that is really fantastic about Ben. He's constantly learning things and also telling me what he's learning and pushing me to learn some things too. So without further ado, Professor Benjamin Bierman. I don't have to say anything now. Could you turn it up please? I don't want to be too close to it. I just don't want to have to go right into it. That's okay. Imagine the scene. It's Saturday night at a dance club packed with people. They're all dressed in stylish, maybe even outlandish clothes. The music is vibrant, pulsing and exciting, inspiring each dancer to out-dance the next person. You can barely move on the dance floor, yet the dancers are almost acrobatic. The music drives on and on, taking the crowd to new heights. All of a sudden, the band breaks it down, plays a slow, sexy song, letting the energy in the club vibrate and sizzle. The dancers are relaxing into a sensual groove while also anticipating the next driving beat. The band lives up to the expectations, cranking it up and slamming the dancers with a driving and relentless tempo. The dancers drive the band, and the band drives the dancers on, and this amazing symbiotic energy builds and builds until the dancers in the band can hardly stand it. The set comes to a dynamic conclusion and, exhausted and energized, the band and the dancers both feel both disappointment and relief. The dancers in the band both need a rest and a trip to the bar or their tables is welcome. The dancers can't wait for the next set to begin. Now, this could be any Saturday night with any band during almost any era, but in this case, the band is a jazz big band in the years 1938. Most of you, if you had been a young adult at this time, would have been a jazz fan and you would have been at this club dancing to a music that is currently maybe quite unfamiliar to you. You probably can't imagine why you would dance to jazz. Perhaps you have heard very little of it, or maybe you have never heard of jazz performance. So these are the kind of things that I'm trying to kind of introduce, trying to get to introduce to people maybe aren't very familiar with jazz. It's not called history of jazz, it's called listening to jazz, and that's the primary goal of the book, is to try and help come on in. Got one of our music classes coming in, which I really appreciate. Thanks for coming. So I'm trying to help people learn to listen to jazz through this book, largely through the idea of paying closer attention than you're used to doing. We all listen to music all the time. We listen constantly. It's always going on. You have your headphones all the time. We don't live without music anywhere. We can hardly get away from music. But we don't always listen to it as carefully as we could. That's fine. Sometimes you want to get into it. And jazz is maybe a little more, seems to be a little more difficult for people at this point in time. It's not a popular music. It has a very small share of the music business. But it's a wonderful, vibrant, growing music, exciting music that's just alive, changing all the time. And you just need to, you know, it could be that you need a little bit more education with this music than with some of the types that you're more used to hearing. So that's the main point of this book. But also, I give a comprehensive history of jazz, including all the important players, the important compositions, the important recordings, to the whole history of jazz. I also situate in the book, I situate the music historically, because you want some kind of context for what's going on in the world, because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Some things were important to me in this book, particularly, that weren't done in other books, which is to increase the representation of women in the jazz field has been a big issue. And also, Afro-Caribbean influence in the musicians and in music, that very powerful influence is something that kind of gets shunted to the side. People don't really know about. So those are a couple of things that were unique to this book. Another is that I cover contemporary jazz, which often has a lot of relationships to popular music, which can be helpful to students, because there are some elements of popular music. There always have been, but now things are always changing. But the contemporary scene is very vibrant and often gets overlooked. So those are kind of some basic things about the book. It's organized, like a chapter per week of a semester. I have periodic historical overviews. And then I get these detailed listening guides with timing, so you can listen to the piece and follow the timing along. And I give commentary as the piece goes along in a few different areas. Throughout the book, I look at the same qualities in music throughout the entire book. I look at style, melody and harmony, form, rhythm and accompaniment. So by the time you get through the book, you've been kind of inundated with information about all these various aspects of the music. I also have less detailed listening focuses. I have little sections on important musicians. I have extra sections on performance issues. Like Ben was saying, it's very important to me that people get an inside look. Because I think these are the things that will help people kind of relate to the music a little more. To humanize musicians, humanize who we are. I've got some people right here. I'll introduce in a minute and also some friends in the audience. You know, we're really hard-working people, musicians. People kind of think that, oh, it romanticizes it a little bit at times. And really don't have an understanding of things that we go through throughout our lives to be able to do this and to do it well. So I try and bring those issues out in the books, in the book as well. Also, there's a lot of controversies and questions that arise as we talk about these things. And I cover those as well. I thought maybe I'd read a couple. Just ask some examples. We're going to get some music. We're going to play some music. I'm going to make you work. You all have sheets on your chairs. I'm going to make you all work. I'm going to get you so you, ideally, you're going to maybe learn a little something. And I will too, because I want to know if these things work for you. Ben was mentioning going, just in every early stages of a new book project, listening to jazz composition. And my thought is that the difficult part of jazz for people often, people will say, oh, yeah, I like jazz. Or I want to like jazz, but it's hard for me. I don't quite get it. I like it when they start at the beginning. They all play together. And then they do all this stuff. And I don't know what they're doing. And I get lost. And then I like it at the end again because they all play together. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Raise your hand if that sounds familiar. A few of you. I get it all the time. I got it last night. Just a few nights ago I got it. My girlfriend, when we were listening to music, she said the exact same thing. We get it up. It's very common. So we're going to do some exercises that are going to make you listen a little more closely. So when we're doing that stuff, you won't get as lost. You'll understand a little more of what's going on. So it will make you work a little bit. But like for example, when I'm not getting a detailed thing, I try and, what's interesting to me is to try and find the essence of a piece and just lay it out very simply. So someone has something to listen for. This is a song called Traveling Blues by a wonderful pianist, 1924, Levy Austin, her blues serenaders. So I say Traveling Blues is an excellent example of Levy Austin's skills as a powerful accompanist and thoughtful and skillful band leader. She has created an interesting form and a piece that is exciting throughout. Her full sound, commanding rolling bass in her left hand, an authoritative right hand and her attention to detail regarding her place in the ensemble in support of the trumpet and clarinet, helped us to understand why she was an in-demand accompanist and music director, both for blues artists and for a wide variety of other acts. Certainly her skills in the music she produced are worthy of much wider note than has been the case in much of written jazz history. And then I give a little thing, a little highlight, something to listen for along those lines, those categories that I mentioned before here form. And I tell the form, Traveling Blues is an unusual hybrid form in two main sections. First half consists of five choruses, that means separate sections, and I give timings so you can follow it. And second half is more complicated and consists of five, 60 measure phrases. So the instructor has something that he or she can talk to you about and gives you something to concentrate on. Now, I mentioned starting a new book, but the life of a musician is pretty complicated. Not complicated as I'm worried, but we all do lots of things. I'll introduce Tony Regusis over here on piano. How about a nice hand for Tony? Thanks for coming, Tony. I came to academia very late in life, and I spent 35 years as a freelance trumpet player playing with Mike Morialli, who was teaching at the College of Staten Island and plays with all of us. He runs the music program at the College of Staten Island. But I did that for most of my adult life, and we all have, and it includes many things. For example, I was a Sideman trumpet player, but I also have been a band leader. Whenever I need to hire a piano player, I just want to call Tony first thing because he can do anything. Any song, any style, doesn't matter. I don't have to worry about Tony. I don't have to worry that I have to bring any music for him. I don't have to worry that he's going to be late. I don't have to worry about anything. This is a hard-won skill. How long have you been doing this, Tony? 45 years. People think of the kind of respect in society. Who gets respect in society? Usually, it's often because of how much money you make or whether you have some kind of societal position. We don't have much societal position. We're not really very highly thought of in a lot of ways. We certainly aren't compensated very well. But it's a 45 years. If he was a lawyer, he'd be owning his own firm. If he was a doctor, he'd be the head of the cardiac unit. So anyway, the skills that he has gained over all the years are invaluable. How about David Dunaway? Give him a hand. David Dunaway, I'm based. I've known David quite a while but I've known of him for a very long time. We went to the same high school a few years apart but that's not how I knew him. I knew him from a group he was playing with. We're both from San Francisco. He's from the Mission District and I'm from the Head Ashbury. Never the twain shall meet. He was playing stuff on Mission Street. I was playing the blues on Hay Street. He was playing whatever he was playing on Mission. Well, I don't know what kind of music you're playing over in that neighborhood but I do know that he was playing with this group called... What was it called? Just listen to Mel Martin and listen. It's featuring Mel Martin. Listen, featuring Mel Martin. And I was... I don't... I think it was... What was that? Like early 70s? Yeah, mid-70s. And I remember watching him with that group. I didn't know him. I said, wow, that bass player is incredible. And he was a kid. You know, we were young back then. We still are. But I remember him. And David also can do anything. Anything. But what always... What I've always noticed about David is that he's always listening. Hard. Hard. And the... Would you say that's something you concentrate on, David? Would you say that's something you concentrate on? Yeah. I mean, I... Because if I'm leading a band, the rhythm section is always playing all the time. As a trumpet player, I'm playing sometimes. As a band leader, I'm trying to get my mind on a million things. But every time I look at David, I just see him. Just so into the music. Something I've really appreciated. And Benjamin Lapetus, Ben Lapetus, who's... I'm so fortunate to have him as a colleague here. We have a great time here at John Jay together. It's a gift. It's an incredible gift to have him as a colleague. But we also hang out. And we play a lot of music together. And Ben plays all different kinds of music, but has made a career... A big part of his career as a specialist in Cuban music. And he's got this double guitar. And today he's on here. It's a Cuban thing. And we're fortunate to have him here and hanging out with us today. I kind of jumped ahead with that. But what I was getting at was that we do lots of different things. Do a lot of different things. And the same is true for me in my scholarship. I'm a composer. I'm a trumpet player. That's what I was first. When I got to academia late in life, I didn't get a Masters until I was in my late 40s. And I got my PhD at the grad center in my 50s. And so my world as a musician is completely informs everything I do as a scholar. And that's the one thing that I have that's special about me I think that allows me to stand out for a little something in my writing that stands out. Because I have that insiders, a real insiders viewpoint from long, long, hard years of traveling, playing and working and studying. But my writing, I also have a whole scholarly life. I work in a cross-disciplinary way with music theory, musicology, ethnomusicology. I use all these things along with my musicianship as a trumpet player and composer and really a multi-instrumentalist. So all that goes into this. And I've written up a lot of peer review articles and chapters and books and all that kind of stuff. And it's so rarefied. My world is the scholarly world of jazz scholarship. It's tiny. My friends don't even see what I'm writing unless I send it to them. Because it's a little tiny, tiny, tiny world. And I'm getting tired of that. I kind of have a drag. And this book is actually selling. My buddy Michael is using it. You still using it, Michael? Good. John's using it. A lot of people are being used all around the country. And also friends, and I have books for sale for my price. I got them for 40 bucks. You can give me 40 bucks if you want a book. And that's no profit. It's pure on my price. I also have a bunch of CDs. My last CD over there, they're free. So as you're going out, please take a CD if you'd like. There's a bunch there. Probably enough for almost everybody. But I have really enjoyed. So friends and family and all kinds of people have bought the book outside of being a textbook. And they like it as a reference. They like it as something like an encyclopedia. They're listening to something. They're looking up. And sure enough, I talked about it. Or I spoke about the artist. So it's got value beyond just being a textbook. And my next book is actually going to be in the realm of public scholarship. Because I'm really enjoying that. And the ideas I'll be talking about in the book will be talking about jazz composition. Kind of in a similar way as what we're going to do now. Some of the exercises we're going to do. Finding a way that you can grab on to things and understand the music a little better. That's the idea. So I've introduced everybody. I want you all to get out like a pen or a pencil or something and get that sheet going. And if you don't have a pen or pencil, use your phone. Because I'm going to call on you. And students, I might call on you, but faculty, you're not safe. Matter of fact, you're in grave danger. So one of the crucial styles of music involved jazz is a wide genre. But the blues is very important. If you're a jazz musician and you can't play the blues, that's not good. It's not good. You really need to understand that. You need to be able to understand that music and understand it well and speak that language. That doesn't mean there's only one way to play it. There's all kinds of ways to play it. You'll hear. We'll all play it differently. And I told my friend to bring us horn. Why don't you bring your horn, Mike? So we're going to... The first thing I want to do is talk about the form and the blues. And that's largely what I'm going to make you try and figure out. Now, the blues is very simple. Well, in some ways, it's 12 bars. It's divided into 12 bars. Each bar has four beats. So what we're going to do is, right now, I'm going to have them play. We're going to play two times through. We call each time through a form a chorus. So they're going to play a chorus. And I'm going to count the beats. And I'm going to count the measures. And once I get going, I want you to join me. And then we're going to do the second chorus. And I'm going to stop. And you're going to keep going. So you're going to count the second chorus by yourself. And if you don't get to 12 or you got beyond 12, you did something wrong. But I think we'll work it out. So lose an F. One, two, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Two, two, three, four. Three, let me hear it. Four, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, two, three, four, ten, two, three, four, eleven, two, three, four, twelve, you got it, come on. One, two, three, four, two, three, six, come on. Seven, eight, good. Okay, good. Very good. Now we're going to play we're going to play the blues. And you're going to have to tell me at the end how many choruses we played. Okay, now, but you did just then. That was pretty easy, right? Pretty easy. Oh, before I do this, I'm going to show you a couple things. One is, let's do it again. David, mix up two and four. The bass does play, can play a lot of different ways, but two of the main techniques is when the bass plays, we have four beats, one, two, three, four. Sometimes the bass will play on one and three, just two beats per bar, and sometimes they'll play on one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. That's a two. Play a four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Back in two. Okay, great. Good. So you are going to play one more thing. You can be listening for a lot of things. A very important element in jazz in general, but also, particularly in the blues and some styles are they are often made up of riffs, little lines, little repeated lines, and I'm going to show you what a riff is. It's just a repeated thing, right? It kind of goes over the chords. Sometimes it will change a little bit, sometimes it won't. That's what it's supposed to do. By the end, I gave you the sheet. By the end, I want you to tell me how many choruses we played, okay? Now, what does that mean? You could be kind of that 12 bars, and you're going to maybe make a little mark for each one. It means you have to be listening the whole time. Now, that's unusual. I mean, think about that. How often do you do that? You ever do that? Not really. Usually you're doing something else, right? You're looking at your phone. You're watching TV. Who knows what you're doing? When your phones are on, you're not listening half the time. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's true, right? So now, you're going to be listening for that, but I want you to listen for more. I want you to make a note of what choruses David plays in four, and what choruses he plays in two, okay? So that's another thing that you have to watch out for. And I want you to tell me also which choruses I play primarily riffs, okay? Some of it I'm going to do as riffing, playing riffs, and some of it I'm not. So you're going to try and figure that out too. So it's a lot of information, right? So you're going to have to listen closely, and by the end hopefully you'll have. And also, I forget what I wrote on the paper, but I think I also gave you space just to make some notes. What do you notice? What steps out to you? That's so funny. And then you start over again. So I'm going to reiterate. Count how many choruses we play, okay? When David is playing in two and four, when I'm playing in riffs, and anything else you notice that kind of jumps out at you, it's going to come up to you. How'd you do? What did you get? How many choruses? He didn't count. What did you get Evan? How many choruses? I thought we played 12. I asked him a simple question. Look what I got. But I actually allowed myself to enjoy it. Okay, good. That's true. That sometimes can get in the way. So okay, thanks. How many choruses did you get? You weren't counting. What did you get Allison? You got 12. Okay. John, how many did you get? So how many did you think? You thought 13. What did you get? 13 you got? 14? I don't remember that game anymore. But 11 you said, okay. You got 11. Anybody get something different? I've heard 12, 11, 14, 13. What did you get? I started counting about 8. You started counting about 8. What did you get? 12. You got a lot of 12s. You look like you're working hard. What? 13? What did you get Mike? It was 13. It was 13. Lucky 13. But, you know, if you got something else, at least you tried. Seriously. No, I'm serious because you were listening harder than you used to listening. Would you say that's true or not? So you were listening. Okay, now, somebody I didn't ask, did you see when the bass played in two and four, did you pay attention? No, she was listening. How about you? Did you write down? You got lost. Anybody feel confident about the twos and the fours? Yeah, what did you get? Like what choruses did you write? Which choruses he was playing in two and four? Okay, so you were really paying attention. He got 13. And he, you know, I didn't exactly keep track, but I'm assuming, I mean, I know we did it, but I'm assuming you're right because you were listening. So that's good. He gets an A. Actually, you all do because you did it. And that's the idea is that, you know, the more conscious you are, the more little pieces of information you have, the easier it is to follow and to get into something like this. Because, you know, we played, I played, they played an introduction. I played a melody, a riff melody for two choruses, that's three. I played two choruses of a solo. One of them was a riff. And then he played a couple of choruses, he and I traded back and forth for a bars, which is a very common thing as well. And other times, you know, you might have been a lot more lost. This way, at least you were listening on a little bit of a deeper level. So mission accomplished in that respect. We're going to do another one. We're going to do another one. We have a form. The blues is a very important form in jazz, 12 bar blues. Not all blues are 12 bars, but that's the most common. We also have a very common song form called A-A-B-A. Music students in the back, have you guys been talking about that? Gregory, have you talked about that at all yet? Professor Shepherd, has he gone? At least he brought us class. That's good enough for me. So A-A-B-A is a very standard song form, and I have it up here. Eight bars. Each one is eight bars, right? A section is eight bars, A section is eight bars, B section is eight bars, and A section is eight bars again. So we're going to play it now. I got rhythm as by George Gershwin, his brother, Ira Gershwin, and I'm going to play, jazz musicians take this song and do it in lots of different ways, put lots of melodies on it. One, the regular melody, and you're going to follow you don't have to just, I think you just listen. You're going to hear it, and you're going to feel these you're going to feel these eight bars, and that melody repeats, and then B has a different melody, okay? And also the chords are different. What these guys are doing is different. So I'm going to experiment on you. You're going to get to hear it this way the first time through, then we're going to stop. I'm going to do it again. We're going to play. We're going to kind of go back and forth. I'm going to mix the form up. So it's not going to be A, A, B, A. It could be anything. It could be A, B, A, B, B, B, A. I don't know. You know, I do know, but I'm not telling. So and you and this, this is actually much harder I think than the other one because I'm not going to keep I'm not going to keep playing the melody. You're going to have to get the character of the sound see if you can get the character of the sound of each section. So it's a little trickier. It's kind of an experiment to see, we'll see how it goes. Mix it up here and you're going to write down whether you're hearing A or whether you're hearing B and then just like you did last time you're going to kind of read back what you got. We're doing 13 sections. Okay. She's chicken. She's scared. That's why she's going. So you don't have to worry about that. So you should have 13 by the end. You should have 13 and just write down A or B. We're going to kind of pass it around. I'm not sure we did it right. We made a mistake, right? Where did we make the mistake? Okay, let's just we screwed it up. We've actually never tried something just before. So any clue was it like ridiculously hard a little bit, right? It's the B section never gets repeated and we we did all kinds of weird things, but we kind of confused ourselves. Where did we do it? It was at the Anyway, let's see what you got. What'd you get? Anybody try? Who tried? What'd you get? So you had one A at the beginning? Say it again now. Say it again now. I was going to write these up, but I couldn't hook up to it. Okay. Nice try. Really? It is. What about you look like you're what'd you get? Looks like you got stuff written down in your paper. I'm looking to see who's got stuff written down. Did you write anything down? It was a little mixed up. Anybody write it down? Anybody else? Yeah. What'd you get? The first chorus. Okay, A, B, A. Okay. That's correct. And then what'd you get after that? He caught where we made the mistake too. Okay, very good. Very good. Are you a musician? Oh, okay. Well, that's not even fair. But Mike, he noticed that we screwed up that first A. Somebody was doing, I think some of us were doing A and some of us were doing B, but you get the idea. You got the, how am I doing? All right. So, I'm going to open up for some questions in a second, but I just want to do one real, real short quick thing that's important to me, which is the I mentioned before the idea of the Latin influence in jazz. The African-American Latin influence Latino, Latino musicians and their importance to jazz and the importance of their music to jazz and the incredible blending of the two. So, we're just going to, you know, like the accompaniment that you've been hearing Tony do, it's a certain kind of, we call it comping, short for accompanying and he's kind of filling in spaces in a lot of Latin music we could do a different thing. Play a Montuna, one, four, five. So, that's a different type of accompaniment. And then Ben, give us the Montuna just on your today's. So, same thing. It's an accompaniment figure. It's a Cuban instrument that he has on top there. So, it's a very different type of thing. And then, let's get it going and listen for how different, you know, you heard David playing in two and four, but now he's going to do something entirely different. One, two. Just a little something, this little something, perk the spirits up and let you relax for a second and not think about anything. Any questions, anybody have any any questions? Yes. What is the name of the song you played? I got rhythm. I got rhythm. George Gershwin, very standard song. We use it all the time with lots of different melodies. Anything else? Anybody else have anything? That didn't really have a name. One, four, five and C. That's the chords. One chord, the four chord, the five chord and it was in the key of C. We just made it up. So my question is what makes that second song a jazz song? Okay, that's a good question. It's not. Really. But the you know, the two are really close in a lot of ways and you know, like for one thing we all played improvised solos on it and we're mixing in a jazz vocabulary with a kind of a typical Latin style. So it's in a way we're bringing together a couple of styles in the way we play our solos. But maybe more importantly it's not exactly answering your question because it's a very good question because in a way it's not really jazz but in a way it is. But the truth is they all influence each other so much. And actually Ben Lapitas is working on a book that just talks about how this happened in New York, how these two influenced them. But the reason I really did it more than to try and claim it as jazz was that to kind of point out the skill set the musicians have to have because like David for example has to know it's a different thing. I could have hired a different bass player and they might not have really known that style but David does. He knows all these different styles. And so when he goes to a job he might very well have to do that. Tony is playing a wonderful Montuno and he's a strong jazz player but he's studied this music very hard. So we use them all and we're called on them all as musicians and that's a large part of the story that I'm trying to tell with the book is who we are. And so the fact that Ben Lapidus is a specialist in this kind of music but he also is a specialist in jazz. He's equally at home in either one. So really it's more that reason that I played it. Long answer. That's a good question. Anything else? I have questions for you which is I think I probably know the answers though maybe you raise your hands for me I'm going to ask you which task was easier the one of the blues or the one of the rhythm changes who thought the one on the blues was easier raise your hand okay who thought the one on rhythm changes was easier. Okay now half of you didn't raise your hands does that mean that means you couldn't they were both really hard what about you how did you feel about it I was noticing you in the beginning when I was talking you're paying attention you're listening what was it like for you to listen to the music since I used to play trumpet for like five years I kind of I could go with it because like I learned a few songs and stuff so like I'd keep up with the beat and the tempo was slower than and like keeping up with the notes on the trumpet wasn't as easy so it was like I had to keep the for the other one was slower I could keep up with the beat on. Trying to figure these things out I look at me I pass the mic to him it was it was cool I don't I don't usually pay attention to the music like you mentioned before so at some point I did tune out listening to the music and just enjoyed it more than looking for the technical aspect of it was it challenging because of the party I think well mainly because I'm just not used to it I think if I would have put just a tad more effort into it I probably would have been able to do it at least for the first song but I got rhythm and probably would have been a little bit harder but yeah I think with a little bit of effort I would have been able to pick it up We actually challenged ourselves because you notice we don't have any drums right there's no drums here it's just they're a hassle you know somebody has to haul those things in here they have to park on 59th Street and haul them in here and I didn't want that and so we challenged ourselves a little bit because we don't have but we used to we do a lot like this but we kind of we kind of screwed up that I got rhythm ourselves so I think it was kind of a hard a hard task for you but I appreciate you trying very much you know and the idea is that think about that and it's not the things that I was discussing and the ideas that I'm discussing and the kind of effort I'm talking about it doesn't just apply to jazz right I also I haven't taught it for a while but I also teach the classical music you know our music 101 about the history of classical music western classical music and same principles I get you listening not I don't point I don't have you counting 12 bar blues but I do have you looking at form and I do have you looking at all these same issues so really the ideas the kind of things I'm trying to get you to do to listen for this music you can really use for anything so I would just say as a final thought just think about that think about taking your listening just a step further just a step further you know actually concentrate on it find something in it you're going to find something different in it than I do something to touch you doesn't touch me and that's that's kind of what I want to communicate in my next book I want to show you what touches me as a way of maybe reaching you to find your own your own little thing that comes out because there's so many subtleties in music so many subtle things that add to the joy add to the joy of listening to music and you know all the things you can do in school and all things you can do it all throughout your life one consistent thing you're going to do throughout your entire life is listen to music right so if you just put a tiny bit more effort into it you're actually even going to get more enjoyment out of it I'm not saying all the time but sometimes just keep that in mind and I really appreciate you coming again how about a hand for Tony Regusis David Dunaway Ben Lapitas and I'd like to thank the office for the advancement of research for I don't think they do textbooks very often or ever maybe in these talks so I appreciate that they did that I appreciate that they allowed me to do this speak with you and bring my friends to come play so thank you very much just a little shout out to some of the any faculty that's here too that for the advancement of research is doing a lot of cool things and one thing they have is this funded research program that I'm trying to get money to write my next book and we've had a wonderful program for the entire year trying to help us learn how to do these grants so just a couple shout outs to OAR and thank you very much for coming everybody and I really appreciate it listen to jazz