3 Jazz Solos That Nearly Made Me Quit Playing...

look here's the deal as a pianist there is always going to be somebody way better than you and there's always going to be somebody who's putting in more hours and who just has their stuff together more than you do it's just the way that music works and there are times when i have found solos here and there that have caused me to stop and go what am i even doing this is completely pointless and it's easy to feel overwhelmed and it's easy to be like i'd want to quit but at the same time those moments can also be incredibly inspiring and can really help you to kick it into high gear and go hey i would love to be able to do anything remotely close to that so i guess i better start putting in the time so in the spirit of sharing musical interests i wanted to point out some of the solos that i've come across in my time studying that have blown my mind to the point of why am i even doing this if nothing less than to also demonstrate that i'm still here so don't worry if you have these experiences as well the first person i'd like to share with you is actually the reason that i got into jazz in the first place it was the first jazz i ever really heard and i was sold like in a split second of hearing it and that is none other than oscar peterson it's hard to pinpoint one specific solo that really blew my mind in that way that's just like i don't even know how a person gets to that level but definitely the version of sweet george brown just piano and two basses [Music] it's an incredible recording and it starts out incredible but then the bases drop out and it's just solo piano and it helps to illustrate all of the shortcomings that i have always had basically reminding me my left hand sucks [Music] it's just it's just insanity you know very few people could swing as hard as oscar but the next person on our list is actually somebody who had this i want to quit effect on oscar himself and that is art tatum i feel like there's basically nobody who could ever intimidate oscar peterson at the piano but art was definitely one of them and he put on the record i'll never forget it was our tatum's tiger right oh that's enough to kill you it almost did yeah and truthfully i didn't play piano i gave up the piano for two solid months and had crying fits at night i did i was serious you know i really did i can i can vividly remember andre and i i kid you not when i say this something i'd you know i'd say you know you see you hear something that awesome you say well first of all it's two people you know when we got over that at least right you got over that my father said ah one man and when i believed him finally and he couldn't see by the way you had to bring that up right yeah maybe the most famous tune of art tatums was tiger rag which is obviously unbelievable but the tune of arts that i think had the most impact on me was his version of yesterday's [Music] when i was in college this was actually assigned to me as part of a transcription class and it was basically the hardest thing i've ever tried to do i never quite got it fully 100 in the amount of time that i had but that's one i'd like to revisit someday i'd say that's a reasonable person to be intimidated by even if you're oscar peterson and these are maybe obvious ones i mean all jazz pianists especially and jazz musicians in general everybody knows about oscar everybody knows about art tatum they're revered as legends of the music i mean they're the guys that really pioneered a lot of this stuff but i also want to bring up a more modern example one that struck me personally in many of the same ways that oscars music or arts music did and that is as you may have guessed from thumbnail corey henry solo on lingus by snarky puppy [Music] [Music] and before i talk about the solo itself i i want to mention something that i've always noticed and i've always just kind of thought of as being like i don't know why we think this way there's this idea that's i don't know if it's explicitly spoken it might just be more of a subconscious thing that a lot of musicians and and teachers sort of believe or or hang on to maybe and that is the idea that oh yeah all that stuff that's happening now that's cool and all but man john coltrane charlie parker or art tatum or oscar peterson the idea that the legends of the music that we look to as examples to help us understand the history of the music in order for us to bounce off of that to create new things the idea that those artists are untouchable that no nothing will ever be that good and i fully understand it i mean it feels weird to suggest that there's anybody on the planet that is playing better than john coltrane was but the thing is part of me feels like that's probably true now there is of course the added component that many of these artists were pioneering a new type of music entirely but when we turn and look at a band like snarky puppy and we look at solos from people like corey henry you want to tell me that that's not doing the same thing it's building off of music that came before it to pave the way into a new genre a new era so to speak but because it's happening now we somehow don't hold it in as high a regard i i don't i don't fully understand exactly what that is or at least personally for me i i try to reject that idea that because it's newer it's not capable of being as prolific as some of those artists were i just feel like it's so unlikely because when i listened to lingus and cory henry solo on it i'm like no this is this is this is next level this is stupid this is i don't even get how this is happening i just want to quit [Music] i'm not actually gonna quit the piano but man yikes [Music] and it's a fantastic example i think of something that for me personally struck me in a way where i was like i don't know how somebody does this like i i don't know how somebody gets this good and it's not technical proficiency in the same way that maybe art tatum was i mean cory is obviously fully fully technically proficient and it's fantastic in that regard but for me some of the harmonic ideas and the layering of different sounds and the usage of chords mimicking single line melodies oh there's this there's there's so many parts to it i would love to see in the comments below in the spirit of sharing musical influences what are some solos that have impacted you or made you want to quit music entirely i'm sure we've all had experiences like that in our process of becoming musicians and learning more about music let me know in the comments below what those influences have been for you that's gonna do it for me today thank you so much for watching thank you for your time i hope you like the new studio it's not done yet but it will be very soon i promise thanks so much for watching and we will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 1,024,221

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, snarky, puppy, snarky puppy, art, tatum, art tatum, cory, henry, cory henry, corey henry, corey, jazz piano, jazz lesson, jazz, jazz tutorial, jazz theory, music theory

Id: -kG3ERdrDBE

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020