My musical goals....

Last night, I got a phone call from Danny Ray Martin who runs a music school in my old neighborhood called the East Nashville School of Music.

I had been trying to get in touch with him for several weeks to begin taking piano lessons again. That's right, piano lessons. When I was younger, I took piano for many years and frustrated many a piano teacher because I would not buckle down and learn to read notes. I loved playing the piano, but reading notes off of the paper never appealed to me at all.

Finally, my parents found a teacher by the name of June Wolfe. She was absolutely amazing. She could site read Chopin but at the same time played all around Nashville with some of the top big bands in the area. She loved jazz. I can remember her visiting my parents a few years ago at Christmas time. She was playing the piano for us it sounded great, then something happened. I realized that she was still playing the same song, but her hands were playing in different keys.

Anyway, I was taking piano from Mrs. Wolfe. She didn't try to teach me to read notes, she taught me how to read chord charts, how to do chord substitutions, and the Nashville Number System. She took me a long way.

She tried to teach me some pretty sophisticated jazz techniques. The only problem was, I was 15 years old. I listened to rock music and didn't appreciate jazz that much. Thirty years later, I appreciate jazz so much, and I've been kicking myself for years because I could have learned so much.

In some ways, I feel indebted to her. I think she saw a lot of potential in me, but sadly, I didn't take advantage of that opportunity. I don't really see myself becoming a performing musician again, but I really do enjoy listening to music and understanding the underlying chord structures that make it up. In the back of my mind, I've thought about taking piano again, but I couldn't find the time or the teacher.....until now.

When I started working on the idea of taking piano there, I visited their web site (which is impressive) and looked at who their instructors are. I was blown away when I saw that Stan Lassiter was one of the instructors. He is a legend in this area. This is not a place where the little old lady that plays at Church is teaching, these are studio quality musicians with impressive resumes.

Anyway, when I talked to Mr. Martin, we discussed when I would start, and he told me to think about what I wanted to do. What were my goals? I spent today thinking about those goals, so I thought I would share them with you. I will be studying there about an hour a week and squeezing practice time in between work, side jobs, kids sport activities and other general stuff. I had to make my goals reasonable giving the time that I had. So here they are:

I want to be able to play honky tonk piano like Billy Powell from Lynyrd Skynyrd. The best example that I had was the solo on Call Me The Breeze. I want to be able to play gospel style piano like the guy with the Yellowjackets when they play Revelation. I want to be able to improvise and do chord voicings like Bill Evans on Freddie Freeloader. I I would also like to be able to just play like Jeff Lorber and Kenny Gorelick did on Wizard Island. (This was before Kenny Gorelick sissied up and became Kenny G, you have to read Pat Matheny's interview about Kenny G)

I also want to be able to play the Hammond organ like Keith Emerson on Hoedown or Rick Wakeman on Roundabout.

But when I was 10 or 11, the thing that made me really want to play the piano has to be the piano solo in Peter Frampton's Do you feel like we do?

I hope that I'm not being unreasonable ;-)

P.S. I'd also like to be able to play swing like Harry Connick Jr's piano teacher on the version of Stardust from his 25 album. I couldn't find a clip of that though.