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A curious thing ... since I started playing piano, I sometimes play songs that I used, in the past, to hate, but I now enjoy playing them. Sometimes that's because I now better appreciate how good the original song was, sometimes because I can shut out the version I hated and play a version that suits me ... I'm thinking particularly here of Misty. Johnny Mathis never worked for me and I particularly hated his version. The film didn't help. But the music itself is brilliant. <...>
Erroll Garner, who wrote the music, was a gifted jazz pianist and composer. There is a lot of harmonic interest in the chord changes, and as a young man, when I first learned it, it was a challenge for me to improvise over those changes. We still play it occasionally, but like most of the "American Songbook" tunes, they don't go over as well as they used to.
There are some really nicely crafted pop tunes that get overplayed. They were probably popular partially because the song was crafted well, plus people liked the band, words, and/or singer's expression. Hotel California comes to mind.
I like playing over a well crafted and challenging song. It keeps my brain sharp.
Others like Mustang Sally or Seventh Son are just good ol' blues tunes. The simple songs are the musical equivalent to junk food, fun to play but not very nourishing. And bonus -- they won't make me overweight and unhealthy
Since I make my own backing tracks, either from scratch or with the help of Band-in-a-Box, I can make the song longer, leave room for the solo hog (me), take it a few beats faster, put it in the optimum key for our vocals, rearrange it to get to the hook sooner or remove a drawn out intro, exaggerate the groove if needed, and mix it for live performance, emphasizing the drum and bass if necessary to encourage the dancers at the lower volumes we perform at.
It's a lot of work to create a backing track (I also play drums, bass, guitar, and keyboard synth), and I put extra time into it to make it as good as I can. I'm sure the audience doesn't consciously know the little things I do to make it better, and might not even care, but if lucky, I'll get to play along with that track hundreds of times, and if there is something I slid past to save time, I'd hear it every time I play the song, and that would bother me.
I've become a decent singer (hardest instrument I've ever learned), and I enjoy that almost as much as sax and wind synthesizer. I sing and/or play sax, wind synth, guitar, and flute on stage. If the vocals are challenging for me, I have a little drum controller on stage and I'll play hand drums on it.
My partner, Mrs. Notes is a fantastic singer and she plays guitar and synth on stage.
All in all, I'm living the dream, doing what I love to do, with a wife that I love, to an audience that I love, and at the end of the gig, they give me enough money so that I can pay the rent so to speak. I'm not living a life of luxury, but I am living a life of bliss, and to me, that's the dream.
Insights and incites by Notes ♫
Norton Music
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