They got the microphone.
Can you hear me OK, or at
least carry on?
Uh, good morning.
That's, uh,
a good way of any of them.
Good morning to you.
I want to talk about some general things
in music and about writing and
writing specifically, I guess
the
first thing I guess I want to tell you
about music, I'll try to
say things that are my opinions, in my
opinion, I think.
But things that I just tell you flat out,
I probably believe to be true is
that music is
a communicative or even a conversational
method of speaking as
you've probably been over told.
You are one of the most information
generations in the history, certainly of
jazz music.
You have all the tools that you could
possibly need. You have scores, records,
good teachers, good ways of playing.
And
I think that one of the things that I can
best tell you and one of the ways
I can best serve you is to give you some
looks at how to use the materials
that don't give you an illustration.
For instance, I
have walked up maybe sometimes to a young
player and played a note, just walked up
and went back to him and he would look at
this.
And I almost sometimes search for a
response instead of going back back
or hum or honk or hello somehow.
Hello, because I said hello to him.
I hadn't said hello. How are you?
I said hello.
And I had spoken to him using
my voice. I hadn't.
Good morning. Hello.
How are you. My name.
I said hello because I'm a person.
That's the way I felt like saying hello.
I didn't give them a prepared response or
prepared salutation.
So for instance,
I can say a nice quiet hello and
go.
And they could go.
So, you know, good morning, how are you?
I am fine. I learned that someplace,
right?
He could say.
Energetic.
Hello, how are you? I am fine, and he put
some sauce on it, but he still I felt I
had learned it maybe from a television
show how to say that. But if he said
maybe.
I think he's got something to say, I
don't know what, but I'm going to listen
because he took his time and him came
out, he put some space, he put some
thought behind what he said and
didn't ask me to quickly.
He didn't give me a television.
Uh, thank you for your salutation.
And I return it. And he didn't give me a
false answer.
He responded, uh,
when I played the E Natural before when I
before I played anything else, I played a
few E with a few words.
I have some words around and natural.
They're not all the words that I have on
any natural, but they are some,
uh,
my way of telling you different things.
In Melbourne, the musical director of
Meldrew is now I to look for
new musicians and new writers.
One of the things I have trouble
finding is somebody who will talk to me
musically. I find some prepared
people, but what I'm looking for someone
who can speak to me, he can stutter and
he can limp and he can maybe give me, uh,
really his view. And I may not agree with
it at all, but if he gives me a total
view of him and the way he sees things,
he will have my interest and my respect.
So he became through the
informative process, he became an
individual. And that's what I think your
goal is to.
If I were giving advice to
a young writer or an old writer,
I was prepared to live the rest of your
days in a state of being disturbed.
I have occasion to come
out like this and speak
and hear people's music.
I met a young writer in Pittsburgh last
year and he brought up a cause that he
was the school's outstanding writer.
And we listened to three of the pieces.
There was a poet coming up in my room
and he said, What do you think?
There's no mistake.
He said that.
So we put on the fourth one and we played
that well.
I said, no mistakes.
I said, that's not good.
Yeah.
And I wanted
to hear some mistakes because you gave me
a perfect representation of what's going
on right now.
All the four chords and in the plus and
the major over roots, we're in the right
place.
And it didn't surprise me once you told
me just what I wanted to hear.
Yeah. You thought I wanted to hear just
what is being said.
Part of that, I think, is
not spending enough time
trying to find another way.
He gave me the top level.
When you look at something, there is a
problem. There are solutions on how this
will go that put solo hear this and that.
And you passed the meat
of the process by you taking the top
level and said, I will do this, I'll take
the top layer. And that will be my
statement when somebody else's statement
in the first place.
Because you've learned anybody has
learned how to say that if you peel
the top layer off and slow yourself down
and begin to look at what you want to do,
you'll find some more choices and
some more problems, mainly problems
about what you can do with this piece
that you're going to write.