“Hello Again” is a song by Dave Matthews. The title, however, was first used in the film the JAZZ SINGER by the composer of “Sweet Caroline”, the inimitable Neil Diamond. Neil recently admitted that Sweet Caroline was written for Caroline Kennedy. Neil proves that there is boldness in candor!
This post is dedicated to my dad who was cool enough to let me play the piano in the house at ANY time. The 4 AM times, the 3 AM jams were vital to my musical knowledge. Most dads would have imposed a sound curfew . Instead, Dad introduced me to music that I never would have discovered on my own: Stephen Sondheim, Debussy, Bach and on and on. The reason that patterns were exposed in meanspeed music theory was the subtle, sometimes invisible, encouragement of my dad. ”Hello Again” by Neil Diamond is a song that I played one night at 4 or 5 AM - and coming upstairs I expected to be met by a “Do you really have to play at the crack of dawn?” Instead, a subtle “good chords, it was beautiful. I couldn’t hear any melody. Also, you are not playing in time - but it was beautiful otherwise.” It took another 3 people to tell me: ”Dude, practice with a metronome”. One night playing in a piano bar where things just didn’t feel right - the notes were right, but I was not connecting with the crowd. Drummer and friend Bruce Buckley was there with me. He said, “The rhythm is in time to *you* - but if you start playing with time you lose your listener. You gotta understand, Ian, you have your head under the grand piano cover and you are hearing these great overtones and harmonies that don’t fill the bar.” I argued with him, I felt like a loser, I was convinced he was wrong. Skip ahead 4 months. I was asked to play on a studio recording. To my shock, I was fired during the session because instead of playing along with the metronome/click-track, I insisted that my timing was better. It was not. It took the drummer from Little Feet on a cable television show to convert me. He said, “Man, there used to be 200 working studio drummers in New York City, and now it is down to 6 - really two”. And his secret? His dad said, “Okay - under a rule, 50% of your practice must be nothing but you and a METRONOME.” The Little Feat drummer, along with the cable host went on to lament that they started practicing with a metronome late in their careers, and said, “I WISH I PRACTICED LIKE STEVE FROM THE START”. That got me going! I had always thought - if a metronome is clicking at a relentless tempo, the song will sound canned and fake. I was never more wrong. Once I made friends with tempo, my playing improved at least 100% - making friends with the feel of speed gave me more silences, more “ghost notes” - yet I went from sounding like a wannabe amateur to a quality amateur who plays an occasional professional gig. Lesson: Father knows best!
Meanspeed Music Summary
mean speed=60.8 beats per minute
average beat length=0.987seconds
emotive category according to meanspeed music theory=sincerity .
Happy Birthday Hojo! Ian Schneider with Sarah Jane Bristol, James C.C. Manning, Sophia St. John Newman and Hunter Newmanmeanspeed music companyFebruary 24, 2008
