Video Integrity

Upon hearing some extremely contentious jazz music instruction, more the necessity of making money as an extinct "jazz artist," as a past college lecturer in the field of jazz studies I must call the bluff. Jazz music instruction while still unique today, because the music is only about a century old, has principles.  Only millennials would say, "Oh jazz is anything."  This merely is a loophole which allows the complex and in depth field of jazz music to disintegrate and cower to the auspices of a recently chosen pop music championed by novices.  Forget intensive music listening.  Forget music history.  Forget intellectual challenging.  Musical talent is for anyone!  It is a grace given by God.  This is why so many winners of both state lotteries and television talent shows become alcoholics, derelicts, or squander their rewards.  Singing a few songs on television in no way, shape, or form can possible prepare a musician to be a professional.  It does not matter, because there are few jobs for professional musicians left.  The majority of them are in orchestras and churches and have nothing to do with jazz or popular music.  Television talent shows like YouTube videos are welcome shortcuts, immediate gratifications, but with dire educational circumstances.  Allowing users to post artistic material, or rather material of the arts, briefly was rewarding.  Often consumers can offer integral content by nature of being cherished.  On the contrary try looking for an instrument review on YouTube.  There are a number of factory representatives doing presentations selling instruments.  Nothing says they are artistic, enlightening, or enigmatic.  Most are torture.  The playing is poor, the sounds demonstrated are mediocre, and the content is shallow.  I have seen a few quality instructional videos.  Mostly they are my own.  Once I was a college instructor.  A more appealing title is adjunct professor, but let's be honest.  Instructor is more appropriate.  You get no benefits, no tenure, and no poo nanny.  I take that back.  Being an adjunct professor does merit some attention from the opposite sex, just like being a rock star once did.  That is before the world became LGBT, and the heterosexual dynamic waned.  The world never has recovered.  I have posted instructional videos, because it is important to me to remember useful musical information (and otherwise), and because I don't want to forget the process of both learning and teaching.  I have been asked why I post music videos.  This is the reason.  When I design and implement a home MIDI/Recording studio, it is complex and difficult to remember.  Talking about the process is helpful, and sharing it with others is considerate.  Why should I want to hoard the information for myself, seeing as popular music today and its so-called talent is bird seed?  It is not tangible enough to sit on the shelf without a corporate-manufactured plastic sleeve.  I strive for musical excellence, and when I achieve it I like to archive.  Video is a stellar choice.  On the downside video, especially YouTube video, is rife with B.S, but then again so is America.  When public education is smitten by the notion that students will be easier to teach because you give them their way allowing personal computing entertainment devices into the classroom, it was over.  It has been over since that decision was made.  While I do use a laptop computer for educational porpoises, and it is indispensable for quick research, never has it ever served as a substitute for music education.  All of the applications on the planet intended for music production cannot create art and as such I do not use them for that.  I use them to record and document my own artistry.  Since the industry as sidestepped the artistic educational process as has public education in general, we have Zombieland.  Staring at the phone will not build you a house, grow you a vegetable, fertilize an embryo, write you a song, or make you a dollar.  You must figure it out yourself first.  

The White Supremacist's Swing that is Not King.

Briefly I watched today a Youtube video of a B list jazz pianist giving a lesson to a student.  I heard this musician live in Raleigh, North Carolina back in the day at the Frog and Nightgown.  He was the pianist for a notable A list saxophonist.  He was impressive, but I remember he didn't swing.  The topic of his instructional video upon which I happened today including the concept of "swing."  I do not want to open pandora's box at this juncture in my evening.  I know what swing is.  Swing is what swing does.  It is tangible, and it is the discernible quality that makes or breaks a jazz artist.  You can feel it.  Most of the music today we hear has no real feeling.  America no longer is set up for that.  Musicians exchange files, download beats, and collaborate.  They do not stuff into a three track studio in Motortown and play live.  They do not engage in the process that created artistic American music.  The likes of Stax Records, Muscle Shoals, and Motown are dead.  Apple, Google, and the rest vie for control of the music industry.  Ho hum.  Stupid is as stupid does.  Hal Galper was _______.  It to me was alarming.  What he was telling his student was incomprehensible.  Time after time he told the student to change from quarter notes to eight notes, and although the student pretended to understand and do what he asked, he continued to play the bebop scale in eighth notes.  None of the things he was attempting to teach became evident in the students playing.  The only thing that happened was a slight change in legato when the internal pulse upon which they relied to play time changed from quarter notes to half notes.  Brazilian music is notated in 2/4 time, and this is important.  Finding the broader beats upon which to rely while counting also is important.  It dawned upon me that his understanding and thus concept of "swing" is what I call "pop."  He even suggested that most traditional jazz pianists tap their foot on one and three!  One and three!  I stopped watching, and I must digress.  Here is a working jazz pianist telling a student to tap his foot on one and three, because they are the weak beats, the beats that don't swing.  All righty then.  Herein lies my grift with America.  There is a force truly that does not understand the feeling of Swing (Wynton Marsalis) and is functioning in a public capacity as a purveyor of America's one true art form.   Truly we have become a failure of a nation or more accurately the social media of Capitalism.     

The Untreated Disease of Capitalism

Russia hacking the election just fell out of the news, just like every other trumped up topic.  Real news reporting during the days of Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, and Harry Reasoner are gone.  Edward R. Murrow has left America en route for Canada with the other Hollywood "stars."  Current news reporting suffers from the same ills as the rest of the American population.  ADD.  ADD fell out of the news, just like every other trumped up topic, although it wasn't. The things in this world that are and have been real are ignored.  Reality is reality TV, fiction, graphic, violent, and unChristian.  The feeling of Christianity no longer is possible it seems from the exertion placed upon it by life.  Modern life.  Modern life in America is a shallow puddle, a humiliated anxious cesspool of anger, disappointment, and resentment.  The man he is again me.  (that in the black slave colloquialism of Mark Twain means, "Against me."  The man he is again me, and I don't think I'll make it through.  Trump is trying.  I feel it is a good SCOTIS pick.  His Secretary of Education, and this is speaking from someone with a Bachelor's degree in Music Education, is a misstep.  Hopefully her vetting process will cut through the muck.  Muckraker.  Moonraker.  Faker.  Midnight shaker.  Education has been a joke for two decades.  Although I see the manifestations of poor public education daily and metaphorically as American life, I have no interest in battling "the man."  The man he is again me, not going to give me what I'm due.  Johnny Depp has fourteen homes, and he is a mediocre actor.  Don't get me wrong.  I like some of his characters.  No actor deserves fourteen homes, and if they have them they are imprudent and influenced by drug and alcohol abuse. The mortgage payments on fourteen homes could amount to two million dollars a day.  Who in their right mind ever could conceive they could support such a habit?  A few hookers (Charlie Sheen).  A few bails of spleef (Willie Nelson).  Cuban cigars (?)  Moderate needs.  Who possibly could want what most American CEO's and celebrities have?  The answer is those suffering from the disease of Capitalism, a fatal socioeconomic system which has ruined America.  Stop.  Backtrack.  Capitalism has not ruined America.  Poor public education has.