Why Theory?

After all, when it comes down to it, we play one song at a time. One doesn't need to know every standard in every key, just the songs on your band's song list. By the time I started playing for a living rock and roll was still new enough that people would call each other up (on their old black ebonite telephones) to say "Hey, there's a rock band at the Jamaica Inn!" One by one the venues replaced their staid "tenor bands" (piano, upright bass, drums, swing era tenor sax) and organ duos with "skating rink" repertoires. 4th Street Bowl, The Safari Room, Brass Rail, Da Swamp, The Show Bar, Turquoise Room, Elmo's Longhorn, The Mars Club -- city after city -- a good rock combo could fill the room. I worked a succession of gigs coat-tailing on the skills and insight of bandleaders who knew their music theory, but all I needed to do was wind my way through the songs "playing my part."

In 1970 I played in a 10 piece horn band organized around the genius of Clark Baldwin, a consummate arranger and exemplary alto saxophonist. At that point I had been playing professionally since 1957, full time union musician (Local 99, Portland, Oregon) since summer 1966, and already the hippie movement in San Francisco had caused a sea change -- the 6 night a week club gigs were gone. "Home Sweet Home" had a terrific funk/soul/jazz rhythm section (guitar, Fender bass, drums, electric piano/clavinet), 5 horns (3 saxes, 2 brass) and a great singer (Jimmy Bojorquez) with a fine, clear, high voice. We did originals by "Baldwin & Bojorquez," primarily arranged by Clark and modified at rehearsals in consensus with other horns and the savvy rhythm section. I felt lucky to be the 10th guy with this crew -- their harmony discussions were way beyond me!

We recorded our "Power To The People" album for Capitol, renting A&M Studio B for two days in November of 1970. Because we had rehearsed for months we were able to record 32 minutes of music in 10 hours. Producer Grady O'Neill had put up over two grand for the studio, transportation and lodging, and there was an exec, Joe Saraceno, and engineer/producer Gary Paxton. Gary had golden ears, pushed us to do our best and everything we did was a keeper on the second take. Our rivals, Tower of Power had just released East Bay Grease and our album was slated for December release. But something called "the Nixon economic program, phase II" knocked the props from under everything. Legend had it that all the accountants on "floor 7" of the Capitol building were laid off, president Stanley Gortikov was gone along with the last 40 groups added to the roster, and John Lennon's one chord "Power to the People" supplanted our release.

By early 1971 I was on welfare and food stamps, secretly augmenting those subsistence stipends with weekend gigs playing for dancers. I enjoyed playing tenor sax, reading standards (from the "C" chart) with organist Jim Crossley, and Buddy Molina pretty much let me "play what I heard" with his rock band. But after 18 months on welfare I was encouraged to go to college on the GI bill, and even though our 4 piece R&B band "Tyme" had just landed a 6-nighter at the Mecca in Santa Clara, I started at junior college with 15 units of digital electronics courses in January of 1972. 9pm-2am at the club and 8am-3pm at school only lasted 6 weeks and the very soulful and accomplished Danny Hull took over my spot in the band. Electronics was not my first love, but instability of the music biz and taking care of a young family meant "stay with the program!"

The VA paid me up to $350 a month, but I needed to pull 15 units to qualify for the full amount. I got ahead on my electronics and required courses and began to add music curricula. There was an apocryphal story, I think it was altoist Gigi Gryce who went to Thelonius Monk and happily told him he had been selected for entrance to the Julliard School of Music and Monk replied, "Gee, I hope you'll be alright!" The conventional wisdom was that going to school would mentally tie you up in knots, better to gain your wisdom on the bandstand. But I had been frustrated by my inability to "play over the changes," had a hard time remembering my parts, difficulty hearing lines fed to me and transcribing from recordings was a slow and difficult process. So I eagerly added more and more courses like stage band, arranging, classical theory and piano. In 1965 I was backstage at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu, my friend Jango Derasmo introduced me to Stan Getz, and I asked Stan "How can I become a better tenor player?" He said "Play the piano!" So no matter what your main instrument is, try to learn something about the keyboard!

After I graduated I took a big detour, working in the electronics business from 1974 to 1997. But I got lucky and snagged a full time music job again after "the kids were grown and the wife left home." I kept playing through the years, but I had my radio dial set on the R&B and jazz station and missed most of the pop and rock music released between 1972 and 1997. I was totally unaware that there was a blues revival, but harmonica ace Red Archibald picked me up and whipped me into shape -- almost literally (!) -- let's just say he was a strong leader. I had attended the Stanford Summer Jazz Clinic a couple of times, and I remember pianist Hal Galper looking directly at me while he said "If there's one thing I hate, it's a dilettante musician. You want to learn to play music, do it for your living!" So there I was, March of 1997. My employer Computer Attic was closing, I had severance pay and COBRA for my medical, and 300 gigs a year with Red and the "Internationals."

I learned to play the tenor all over again, in E, A, G, C, D, maybe F. Sometimes a harp would go bad and we'd move a C arrangement down a half step to B, and we did Johnny Guitar Watson's "Love To Love You" in Ab. There was a blues in Bb minor -- every once in a while I got to play flute on that one -- Bb minor "lays" nicely on the flute. Red became ill around 2000-2001, the gigs became less frequent and I transitioned from part-time AV work into full-time hotel audio-visual. After Red passed at the young age of 53 (I was 53 when I started with him) I played with Jerome Engelberts and "Nightmare on Bourbon Street." Jerome is back in Holland now -- those European cats study American music! -- he's one of the best "Southern style" R&B guitarists I've heard. And around 2005 I helped form the horn section for "Bing & the Bingtones." Bing Collora and Ken Landreth were writing parts when bassist Steve Quinones got me into the nascent lineup. After writing one simple arrangement I realized I was in over my head and we tapped on my old friend Clark Baldwin. Trumpeter Tom Poole and trombonist Ted Sweatt, later Mike Rinta, joined the horn section, enjoying Clark's arrangements, as we all did!

35 years later I was again witnessing Clark's genius, writing intricate arrangements, at times scribing parts in the proper key for each instrument without first referring to a piano or "concert" score. I took early retirement from the physically demanding audio-visual work -- no more gaffing, no more "pipe and drape" -- and I began actually practicing my horn, reading charts again. And I determined I was going to master the "theory thing" and learn to play those changes. Only problem was, my mind kept rebelling, telling me it's too complicated. As if one had to be born with innate knowledge of the admittedly arcane musical nomenclature. After all -- 12 keys -- but fifteen key signatures with F# / Gb at the pivot point, and C# / Db and B / Cb on either side! In one of the Hal Galper clinics he suggested that music is so big that we're never going to master it all, so just practice what you feel. Well, I felt those inadequacies that I still needed to overcome, and decided to change my attitude about how difficult it all is and improve my understanding. I have witnessed many young players with much less experience who could improvise well with their good ears and intuitive understanding. So I stopped telling myself how difficult it is to play "jazz" and started finding ways to simplify.

The Jamey Aebersold play-alongs are a great help, and something like the Amazing Slow Downer is a great aid when transcribing. But the plethora of chords and chord symbols seems almost infinite. So I mounted an exercise to increase my understanding, to determine what the basic chords and their alternates are, make things simple, wind my way through the thicket for once and for all. I got out my fake books, Aebersold volumes with standards, and I analyzed about 30-40 tunes in the key of Eb, listed their chords and counted their occurrence. I disregarded temporary modulations to other keys. When the dust settled, I saw chords based on the seven degrees of the major scale, plus a number of passing chords, usually diminished ascending and Lydian dominants descending. This led to my recent post on "music by the numbers" -- 7 modes, 4-5 types of dominant chord, minor with a major 7th and 2-3 symmetrical chord-scales.

The secret has been known for centuries: just play "in the key." That's why it's called a "key!" This means that each instrument is really 12 instruments in one -- E minor is different in the key of G, key of C, key of D. But pick a song, play in the key, and notice that every once in a while the composer introduces an accidental. But it's almost always the same alterations, and after a while your infallible inner ear comes to the fore and guides you through the minefield. Just keep playing -- it's like weeding the garden -- when you find the notes that don't work, don't play them again!