"The Zine" content is contributed by Dave Latchaw and colleagues who use the Internet to promote their musical projects. You can check out previous issues at "The Zine" Archives.
- Article: "Where Has The Day Gone?" by Dave Latchaw
- Guest Artist: Kim Reith - Very cool guitarist and composer.
- Featured Web Site: Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
- Featured Web Video: A Chat with Pat Metheny
- CD Pick: Zawinul Syndicate "Lost Tribes"
- Cartoon by Steve Smeltzer
Where Has The Day Gone?
by Dave Latchaw
It would seem in this day and age with technology and time-saving devices, there would be more of the most precious commodity, time. We all seem hugely busy. Everybody. Don't you find whenever you are moaning a bit about how busy you feel, the person you are moaning to seems to be as busy if not more? We all seem barely able to manage to complete all our daily tasks. There comes a time when one has to deal with the anxious feelings of just keeping ahead of deadlines but not reaching goals. One has to come up with strategies to tackle the waste of time. Here are some ideas I am working with for myself.
A Greater Conscious Of Time
1. Try to be aware of when you are wasting other people's time. Take care of the business at hand, and let the person you are imposing on control the length of the moment. If you have all the time in the world to hang at that moment, be aware of the signs they will give when they need to bail out of the conversation, and don't take it personally. The person probably just doesn't have the time. The more you are aware of wasting other people's time, the more you can recognize it when it's happening to you.
2. Try to be aware of when your time is being wasted by others. When you have a person initiating interaction with you, be aware of the tasks you have for that day. Take care of the business and take control. You have to be diplomatic yet firm if you have a potential time wasting situation confronting you.
3. Try to be aware of activities that are not productive. Not all tasks are fun, and it's easy to procrastinate in order to avoid doing whatever it is that needs to be done. Be aware of when you are trying to justify watching your third half-hour of the headline news or MTV's Real World Marathon. You're probably just putting off the upcoming or looming task.
Methods To Implement For Better Time Management
1. Planning ahead. Start each day with a list of things that you want or need to accomplish that day, week and year. This will help you accomplish daily activities, and still keep the big picture in mind. One can get lost with the daily minutia and lose perspective of long term goals.
2. Write it down. This one is the hardest for me. I like to try to keep a list in my head, but when there are many things going on all at once, it becomes even more important to write things down. Making a list is important to be able to do method three.
3. Prioritize. Take your daily list and put it in order of importance. Discipline yourself to tackle the most important things first. This may not be easy to do because the most important thing may not be the easiest, but once it is done it will make the rest of the projects on the list seem easier.
4. Budget your time. Don't let distractions get in the way. Set aside a certain amount of time to accomplish your given list of tasks, and use that allotted time. Some things may take consistently take longer than what you planned. I know for myself when I work on projects that involve the computer, it almost always takes longer than I anticipate. If I keep lists and write things down, I will be able to see which projects take longer. This will help me better allocate my time and accomplish my list of projects.
5. Learn to say no. If you have work that needs to be done, just do it. Say no to the things that get in the way, like television, mindless internet surfing, and people who want you to do something else. When friends are trying to pull you away and you say no, you'll just have to hope that they will respect your diligence.
6. Relax. Managing your time better and getting your work done will greatly reduce stress. It will let you accomplish what you need to and still have time to hang out with friends and have fun.
Everyone has a lot to do. Organizing yourself and finding methods that work for you will increase the quality of your efforts. Everyone wants to do good work or be a good student, and so often quality suffers not for the lack of desire but due to lack of time management. Check out this useful website by Don Wetmore. He has lots of great ideas, you can even get a free daily time management tip. Give it a try, there's no time to lose!
Kim Reith
**Kimi update - February 2002**
Check out the new Kim Reith web site at www.kimreith.com.
#1 At which sites can readers find out more about you and check out your music?
The best one at this time is MP3.com www.mp3.com/KimReithTrio because I pour the most energy into it, but I also have an IUMA site. www.iuma.com/kimreithtrio. Had one at Riffage, but it folded. At a future date, the IUMA site might be a good place to buy my albums. I'm still searching for a label for my album, so it's unreleased. Anyone out there have a label in need of a creative jazz album?! I recorded this album a year ago, right before I moved from San Diego to LA. It consists of 10 of my compositions plus the Thelonious Monk tune "Epistrophy." Three of these tunes are up on my MP3.com site.
I also have three MP3.com stations which feature my music and that of other MP3.com musicians I like - Open Out, Out Late, and Heavy on the Guitar Sauce. All three cover jazz, classical, experimental, World and blues, but each one covers a different aspect of these genres.
open out
out late
heavy on the guitar sauce
#2 How has the Internet changed your musical activities?
Mainly in the areas of promotion, listening and contact with other musicians. I spend a great deal of time in activities connected to my MP3.com site - maintaining and listening to my stations, exploring other artists' sites, and corresponding with musicians I've made contact with through the Internet. It's exciting to be able to hear some music I like and immediately fire off a letter to the composer or musicians on the recording telling them how much I like it. I've also had esoteric musical & theoretical discussions with musicians I've "met" via the internet, and I find that very fulfilling and stimulating. One discussion led me to change a chord in an older composition - it put things in focus for me and helped me hear what I wanted to do with the compositional form.
I listen to more music by Indies and minor label artists now. A lot of unreleased & minor label music on MP3.com is as good or better than music heavily promoted by a major label - less commercial, more individualistic, more explorational. I often prefer to listen to music by good undiscovered & lesser-known musicians because I feel kinship with them. Certain very abstract or out there music has a hard time finding a sympathetic label - I'll wager there is radical music to be found on MP3.com the likes of which you won't find at Tower.
Lately I've become involved in two Internet-related recording projects. One's a long-distance free jazz 4-track project and the other is a solo jazz guitar project, both intended for MP3.com sites. None of my originals were appropriate for solo guitar, so for that project I wrote some new material I could play as chord-melodies. I probably wouldn't have written these compositions if I hadn't been looking for something I could add to my mp3 sites! Necessity is the mother of invention. I used a new compositional technique which takes me in a different direction.
#3 What was it like to be in the punk band "The Well Babies"?
It was really fun when we weren't arguing. The band was sort of like a re-creation of all our dysfunctional families, and at one point we also lived together in a collective. When we started out, we were a bunch of punks who didn't know how to play but we wanted to learn how within the context of a band. We met through various political activities we were involved in. Some of us knew rudimentary things about our instruments. I'd been playing guitar for 6 months and knew very little but I practiced every day. Everyone was impressed because I practiced a whole hour a day… The group gradually whittled down to a trio as members dropped out. The 3 of us stayed together for 2 years. It was a creative time. Our history with each other culminated in a two month band field trip to Europe and the UK, where we performed for various squatters' benefits. The whole thing fell apart in a freezing cold squat in Berlin.
#4 Did you play jazz before that experience, or was it something you got into while in "The Well Babies"?
My first guitar teacher, Marlena Teich, was an excellent bebop guitarist heavily influenced by early George Benson. She was always showing me little jazz things which I'd inject into the Well Babies' music. When the band broke up, I mooned around for a few months playing our material, but finally got really bored with playing the same old stuff. I really craved something more technically challenging, and like a bolt from the blue I suddenly realized I could just get serious & start learning jazz, which I'd always been interested in! My experience with learning jazz guitar is that it takes forever to get anywhere. There were years when I practiced 5 hours every single day without much apparent headway. Anything new and difficult I regarded with panic and resistance until the day of reckoning would eventually arrive and I'd realize that I was going to have to learn that too. It's a one-day-at-a-time process. All you need is the patience of Job.
#5 What was it like playing solo guitar on the streets of Paris?
Cold! My boyfriend and I lived on the 7th floor of our building, literally in a garret, so I had to lug my guitar and Mouse amp up & down 108 stairs every time I played out. I was terrified of performing and had to work up courage to go out there. We were rationing these teeny cans of spaghetti… Had very little money. Everyone I met kept telling me the heyday for metro and street performance in Paris had ended 6 months before we arrived. It was extremely difficult, but it was a good experience because it forced me to think about how to construct the performance of a tune from beginning to end, in such a way that I could hopefully hold people's attention for five minutes. For instance, when you play solo jazz guitar you have to think about throwing in chords pretty often, rather than treating the instrument like a horn playing single lines. You think about dynamics. I was still in the early stages of learning both my instrument and performance skills. It was terrifying, but it helped me develop my style.
#6 Who has influenced your compositional and playing style?
I'm not sure. I didn't set out to write like this person or that one, but at one point I discovered George Russell's opus, "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization." I only really read a tiny snippet, but realized that because I was unfamiliar with the scales he was discussing I was going to have to woodshed until I'd internalized them before I could continue reading his book. After practicing those scales and really thinking a lot about a few of the concepts he discussed, I wrote a bunch of stuff that is a direct result of those thoughts. I'd say I'm influenced somehow by Mingus. It started out that someone thought something I'd written & arranged was Mingus-like. I said, "Oh yeah?! I'll have to look into this more closely." I've listened to LOTS of Mingus, who's my favorite composer/arranger. I'm also drawn to Wayne Shorter's pieces like "Fall" and "Fee Fi Fo Fum;" Bill Evans' "Blue in Green"… "Nardis"… George Russell… I like compositions in which the progressions are unexpected, and this is what I try to do in a lot of my work. Weird changes force improvisers into new territory, and you get an edgier performance. Later I studied more formally with a really wonderful pianist and composer/arranger named Rick Helzer who influenced me a lot. He taught me about chromatic modalism. I've written many of my compositions to explore specific musical problems. If I want to improve at playing over certain types of progressions, I'll write a piece that gives me an opportunity to do that. Or I'll create a rhythmic problem for the performer to deal with. Often I discover really odd progressions by writing the melody first, not the form. This is how I write most of my stuff - by improvising a melody, then going back & trying to figure out how I might have been thinking harmonically. The funny thing is, since I didn't begin with formal training I had my own ideas about how progressions could work, which I gradually built on through books I read and through my own explorations.
Guitarists I feel influenced by are Grant Green, Wes, Joe Pass, James Blood Ulmer, and my old teachers, Marlena Teich, Duncan James, and especially Art Johnson. Then lots and lots of jazz instrumentalists. I never set out to sound like someone else, but we can't help but be influenced by the players we listen to a lot. Jazz involves a tradition, so you have this huge backlog of people who've gone before. With players I like, I try to absorb something about their underlying playing principles or the spirit in which they play. Rhythmic concepts in jazz are important to study, so sometimes I'll listen only from that perspective. I feel dynamics are extremely important and also ignored by a lot of players, but really good players have a lot to teach us about dynamics, if we listen for them.
I also have three main spiritual/musical role models: Sonny Rollins, because of his profound approach to music which I would like to emulate, Eric Dolphy, and John Coltrane.
#7 Who and what do you listen to for fun?
Mainly jazz, some classical, flamenco, New Music and music from non-European countries; Balinese, African, Indian... I really do listen to my own MP3.com stations, so if you check out what's on them you'll get a good idea of my current listening patterns - to name just a few, Dan Stearns, Edmund J Wood, Jeff Alu, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, Errol Rackipov… Big favorites from among the more well-known players are Bird, Sonny Rollins, Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ravi Shankar, Geri Allen, Mark Dresser, Mark Whitfield, Kevin Eubanks, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, Bill Evans, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Lee Morgan, Lester Bowie, Messiaen, Sam Rivers, Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Sam Rivers, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Mingus, Steve Lacy, Roswell Rudd, Cecil Taylor, James Blood Ulmer… This list could go on for days. There's a whole slew of more avant garde modern jazz and New Music people I listen to either in concert situations or on recordings at home. My boyfriend has very adventurous taste so I hear quite a bit of "out" music from his collection, and it influences me very much.
I should add that I'm REALLY into live music. You can't achieve transcendental listening experiences from mere recordings, only from live music. You can learn so much just from watching and listening to musicians at a club or hall. I've had many cathartic live-music experiences which moved me and taught me deep things about music. The artist's role in society is like a shaman's.
#8 When surfing the Internet, which sites do you like to check out?
I don't do a great deal of Internet surfing. My Internet use is usually very specific - if I'm researching something I do searches for specific topics, from record labels to historical events. Or if I need something like strings I'll search for the cheapest online source. Within the MP3.com site one thing will lead to another - I'll find someone interesting, listen to their stuff and then start checking out either their links or stations they're on. Another good way to find interesting music is to search for small labels, like "9 Winds." Usually a small label will include several tracks per album. You can find TONS of new music simply by opening their links.
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz
Thelonious Sphere Monk is a must study for all musicians. He is known for being one of the greatest influences in jazz and one of the main developers of the bebop style. Check out this short bio of Monk. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz is a non-profit organization that was set up by the Monk family and opera singer Maria Fisher in 1986. It's mission is to offer the most promising young musicians from around the world college-level training with America's jazz masters, and present public school-based jazz education programs around the world. The institute offers a variety of jazz education programs as well as a jazz competition, national jazz curriculum, television specials and other wonderful programs. This overview gives a list of the projects that the institute is involved with, along with links to the names of the staff, the board of trustees and the advisory board which includes such people as Bill Cosby, Herbie Hancock, Charlie Haden and Wayne Shorter to name a few. Anyone involved with the study and teaching of Jazz should check out this site.
No Longer Available!
A Chat With Pat Metheny
Where else but on the Internet could you hear Pat Metheny talk casually about a wide range of topics? This 19-minute video is available from JazzOn-Line. The link is at the bottom of their page. Pat talks about his group and playing with a variety of people. He also discusses listening to his old recordings while working on his new song book, The Pat Metheny Song Book. Other topics include the guitar synth, working for ECM records, and the future of the Internet. A must check out for all those who dig Pat. Click here to see the video.
Zawinul Syndicate
"Lost Tribes"
Every time I'm working on a project where the synthesizer is my main instrument, I always seem to listen to Joe Zawinul. Currently, "Lost Tribes" is the disc I keep coming back to. It's a great combination of modern sounds with an earthy world vibe. Zawinul is a master at using technology to create sounds that seem out of the future yet connected to our tribal past. The grooves the band creates reminds me that the fundamental and basic quality of music is to make people want to dance. Zawinul's lead synth lines have the flow of an ongoing conversation. He is truly a sound painter with his approach to the synthesizer. Since the days of Weather Report, Joe Zawinul has always led the way on how to use the synthesizer to develop one's own voice. This and all recordings with Joe Zawinul are a required listen for all musicians.
The Zawinul Syndicate
Joe Zawinul - Keyboards, Vocals
Mike Baker - Drums
Gerald Veasley - Bass
Randy Bernsen - Guitar
Bobby Thomas, Jr. - Percussion
Guests
Bill Summers - Percussion
Ron Kunene - Vocals
Abner Mariri - Vocals
Ambition Sandemela - Vocals
Lebo M. - Vocals
Carol Perry - Vocals
Darlene Perry - Vocals
Lori Perry - Vocals
Sharon Perry - Vocals
Tracks for "Lost Tribes"
- Patriots
- South Africa
- Lost Tribes
- Rua Paula Freitas
- Victims Of The Groove
- Night Clock
- Afternoon
- San Sebastian
- In A While, In A While
- Changes
Click here to learn more about "Lost Tribes"
Related sites
by Steve Smeltzer - smeltzercartoons.com
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