Brian Eno, my son, music and generative thinking

"We will try to start something different here today. We will learn to sing and play some songs without any words", said Anita on a Saturday morning to a class of two-year old toddlers, each one hanging to their father or mother. The look on the faces of us parents that first day of class was somewhat skeptical, but no one could hide a glare of curiosity. The approach seemed unusual for most of us, who had learned since early years to identify our nursery rhymes through their titles and choruses.

I recall it took me several years to figure out that "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", the "ABC Song" and "Bah Bah Black Sheep" had all the same melody, with small variations, but completely different lyrics and stories. I went on, unsuspecting this was the case, throughout most of my childhood. After learning how to play the melodies of those three of my favorite English-tradition songs in the piano, I finally found out they were actually variations of the same song. I felt somewhat cheated.

"Children develop a better sense of music if they learn melodies and rhythm without any words to them, alongside the regular nursery rhyme repertoire", said Anita. The word "develop" definitely strung a resonant chord on most parents, so much that we are today centered on providing our kids the best opportunities for development, in a world that becomes more competitive and challenging at each turn. We, parents, were convinced, and from that day on we went from curious, to involved and, finally, some of us were able to enjoy with awe the truth behind Anita's words.

During the first few lessons, my boy was suddenly exposed to relatively complex rhythmic patterns and short sequences of notes stressing important intervals (mostly three-note chromatic ascents and descents, and major thirds and fifths), which were made palatable by means of puppets that would "say" sounds they had to repeat (things like "pa-paaaaa, pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-paaa" etc). The theatrical play, and the absence of words actually seemed to make the kids more comfortable, and the responses were faster than we had seen previously, when another teacher had opted to use the more traditional learning-through-words approach.

After two or three weeks of lessons with Anita, our two-year old boy came up with some pretty amazing musical stunts. One of them was particularly illustrative of what was actually happening to these young kids, via the opportunity of learning Anita's "songs without words". We were having breakfast one day, and he had his favorite toy cars on the table, from the film "Cars": "Mater" and "Lightining McQueen". He was pretending McQueen was being towed by Mater, and started singing along over the melody of "The wheels of the bus go round and round":

Lighting McQueen is pulling Mate
Pulling Mate
Pulling Mate

I was still half asleep, but suddenly felt enlightned to understand that he was having a hugely creative moment, mostly as a response to learning things the proper way: music as a more fundamental stream of possibilities for expressing his thoughts and feelings, not necessarily attached to any particular set of words. Oh, boy, that surely made me feel better, and soothed my feelings of having being cheated when I was a kid after finding out that a few of my favorite nursery rhymes were all the same song!

My two-year old had created his own soundtrack, freely using a known melody to attach his own words, all consistent with the context of his pretend play (OK, OK, he did invert which car was being towed...). At that moment, I also saw a strong manifestation of an idea I had been toying around with in recent weeks, which connected my son's improvisation to the more formal concept of "generative thinking" (se, eg, Low and Hollis, 2003). (See also a neat article about kids and generative learning/thinking).

The experience I had with my son also connected us to the fundamentally generative nature of musical works created by Brian Eno , to recent developments made based on Eno's works which led to applications for the iPhone , and even to the underlying framework governing the development and the internal mechanics of computer games like Will Wright's Spore. By the way, the seed that had me going on this topic in the first place was actually an interactive interview/workshop I had seen a few months back featuring Brian Eno and Will Wright, together, discussing generative creation processes.

On Herbie Hancock, Jeff Beck and... Kevin Bacon

I don't particularly like or dislike Kevin Bacon's acting. But there's nothing I can do, he is more connected than I could ever imagine to two of my greatest music heroes. And the truth is, Bacon is closer to many more than we would think, or like... In a recent documentary aired by the Australian Broadcast Company (ABC), the new field of "network science" is examined, in its attempts to explain mathematically how the idea of six degrees of separation between people may, after all, be more than an urban myth.

The documentary, entitled "How Kevin Bacon cured cancer", argues that one of the first proofs of the networks concept came through a simple experiment showing that most Hollywood actors where connected to Kevin Bacon by at least or less than a handfull of other actors. That's where Kevin Bacon comes in. But what about him and Herbie Hancock and Jeff Beck??

It all has to do with the reason why this post is so connected to the previous one, about the Five Peace Band gig in Perth, and to what motivated me to start this blog in the first place: how people and events are so more connected to each other than we usually think. In last week's post, I said that the main reason for going to the Five Peace Band gig at King's Park was to see the drummer, Brian Blade. I also said that the gig was the second moment of musical bliss in Perth in less than a month, and that the first one had been seeing Jeff Beck's at the Perth Concert Hall (sure, a third one would have been seeing Neil Young at the Big Day Out, but I had to give that one a miss).

Well, Brian Blade would not be the drummer for Chick Corea and John McLaughlin's Five Peace Band if it had not been for Jeff Beck's concerts in Australia! Before Brian Blade came into the picture, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta was invited by John McLaughlin to record his new album, Industrial Zen, in 2006. When John and Chick created the Five Peace Band, around mid-2008, Vinnie was the natural choice, and became the band's first drummer. However, he had also accepted Jeff Beck's invitation for his tour of Australasia, in late 2008, and early 2009. When the Five Peace Band scheduled its tour of Australasia, Vinnie was no longer available, so that Brian Blade was invited to sub.

I was there, on 21 January, to watch Vinnie Colaiuta playing his firm, powerhouse style drums in Jeff Beck's Perth Concert Hall gig. Being there realized the dream I had since I was a kid of seeing Beck live. And a great surprise was to find out that he, at the age of 64, was still able to deliver as much punch from his guitar as he did in my perception of his music some 20+ years ago. I didn't yet know, but Beck's concert in Perth also allowed me the opportunity of seeing Brian Blade performing with the Five Peace Band, and all that right here in our backyard.

Now, Herbie Hancock connects in via six-degrees, or, if you prefer, the Kevin-Bacon paradigm (sorry, but there's more, actually connecting Kevin and Herbie below!). One of the main attractions of Jeff Beck's recent world tour is the unbelievably young and talented bass player Tal Wilkenfeld (who is actually Aussie, from Sydney). Tal is in her early 20's, and has such subtle charisma and amazing technique that, after Beck's gig, I was swept, and back home I searched the Internet for more on her playing.

Within the lots in the net about this young musician, I found a video of her recording with Herbie Hancock for BBC's Live in Abbey Road sessions. In that video, Herbie leads a band that also includes the great saxophonist Wayne Shorter, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (again!) and singer Corinne Bailey Ray. It is one of the most beautiful interpretations of Joni Mitchell's song "River" that I have ever seen in my life.

That's a good place to stop writing on my awe about connectedness, so that I won't go on to the whos, hows and whats come out of connecting, back from Joni Mitchell, Brian Blade to Daniel Lanois, to Bob Dylan, to Willie Nelson, to Brian Eno and U2, Terry Bozzio, Tony Levin and Peter Gabriel, and then to the reasons why I started playing the bass during my teens...

PS1: Believe it or not, Herbie Hancock has a Kevin-Bacon-number of 2 (ie, he has two degrees of separation to the actor): Hancock played himself in the film Indecent Proposal alongside Oliver Platt, who was in the film Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon.

PS2: And... Jeff Beck also has a Kevin-Bacon-number = 2: Beck played a lead guitarrist of a band in the film Twins alongside cute Kelly Preston, who, in the film Death Sentence, is Helen, the sister of main character Nick, played by Kevin Bacon! (More KB numbers here,if you dare...)

Chick Corea and John McLaughlin in Perth

Last night I lived the second moment -- in only a month -- where bliss comes to a small, hidden Australian capital to attenuate its isolation from the broader musical universe out there. The first was Jeff Beck's enlightening gig at the Perth Concert Hall, on Jan 21st. Now, part of the Perth International Arts Festival, King's Park hosted a gig led by John McLaughlin and Chick Corea, a couple of the most well-known jazz players of our time. John and Chick's Five Peace Band delivered an unforgettable concert, with a huge bonus: backing these two ever-shining stars, Brian Blade (drums) and Christian McBride (bass) provided the power for connecting heavenly bodies into constellations.

Christian McBride showed unbelievable virtuosity, while still fulfilling his task as bassist to aggregate coherently the fast-paced statements of his fellow musicians. He played both the upright bass and a five-string fretless bass guitar to the highest levels, keeping pace, tone and seamless precision when going to and fro one or the other, while cruising through that night's repertoire. He would definitely qualify as the fastest upright bass player in the world: the speed in which he carved out of the double bass extremely complex and melodious solos were hard to believe, not to say follow at naked eye!

Speaking of speed, John McLaughlin showed that he is still king. But his main quality that sticked out most during the concert was that of a maestro, rather than the virtuoso. More than once I found the other musicians, including Corea, looking for McLaughlin's reassuring smile. He seemed conscious of that role, and kept a sober, almost solemn posture on stage. This was quite a different percepetion I had from the previous time I saw McLaughlin, playing his guitar in a cross-legged lotus position for nearly two-hours, in the almost festive mood of the Remember Shakti concerts, chasing around vanishingly fast notes thrown in the air by his Indian bandmate, the virtuoso mandolinist U. Srinivas.

Despite the attraction that any Chick Corea and/or John McLaughlin concerts have in themselves, the main driving force that led me to King's Park that night was to hear and see drummer Brian Blade. I had become an unconditional fan of this bloke after seeing Blade playing/interpreting magnificently the pop-rock song "Not Fighting Any More", in a sequence of the film "Here is what is", by the Canadian guitarrist and producer Daniel Lanois.

Blade demonstrated his great ability and comfort in being the guy who comes in to connect the dots, and gravitate around shining stars giving them their ultimate soulful edge, and in a sense, strongest meaning. And feeling comfortable as the connecting guy, he was free to take every opportunity to throw in here and there bits and pieces of solos and phrases that were tantalizing.

Having such tight but flexible safety net as a backing left Chick Corea free to fulfill his double act of being the third rhythm section guy, and one of the starring soloists. Corea's magnificent musicality recalled images I built of his musical essence since the first time I saw him, in a workshop at the Free Jazz Festival, in the late-80's. Then, he told a small audience about his conceptual framework: musical blocks that could be sequenced, swapped, superposed in a three-dimensional structure which he could visualize, leading him to a creative space where he assembled his compositions and moved around in his solos.

That rich musical imagery again flooded my mind throughout the concert, and particularly when one of Corea's more recent compositions, "Hymn to Andromeda", was performed. That was definitely one of the highlights of the night, where the pianist's musical universe became unveiled to an audience that seemed to be floating from their picnic mats and camping chairs, blending nicely into the backdrop of a beautiful, starry night in King's Park. The tune also gave saxophonist Kenny Garrett an opportunity to shine above his generally subtle presence.

The second big moment of the concert also came near the end, when all Five Peace Band-mates attacked in unison the hypnotic phrases of Jackie McLean's funky hit "Dr. Jekyll" (also quoted here and there as "Jackle" or "Jackyll"). The public was in such a hypnotic state, that even a few kookaburras in nearby trees seemed to be singing in tune. The number was introduced as one of Miles Davis' favorite pieces from the times McLaughlin and Corea recorded Davis' Bitches Brew, in the early 70's.

In spite of an unexpected cold breeze that caught more than half the audience unprepared, the public left that night, nearly 3 hours of jazz later, in a state of stoked joy that is rare in a culturally-famished place like Perth. After living through all this, I now fear for the rest of the year!