Memorizing tunes

About two years ago, when all my life stuff started happening at once, I booked a gig at the Cornelia Street Cafe.  I decided that for this gig I was going to do all new material - a very lofty goal indeed.  I managed to complete a bunch of half written things, do new arrangements of a couple of tunes, write lyrics to an instrumental piece by Dick Oatts and even compose a few new works.  It was an incredibly fertile time for me and although I was absolutely terrified, it was a thrill to be able to reach my goal and perform all that new music.

Now it's two years later and I have performed those same works a few more times.  I had hoped to record that material by now, but besides my personal life becoming the most important thing, I think I fell into a rut/existential crisis.  I lost sight of what I was trying to do and lost some of the passion and joy I had with the process.  Perhaps the joy I was feeling in my actual life was making my music life look kind of disfunctional?

Anyhow, I bring this all up because I am back to work at some of this material again.  I've had 4 gigs as a leader since September, but due in part to my busy-ness and also my pregnancy and the lethargy and forgetfulness, I haven't really learned this material nearly as well as I would like.  I was often reading lyrics and needed the chord changes in order to solo.  This isn't the best way to carry off a performance and for me it wasn't super esteemable to be going onstage in less than at the top of my game.  I almost didn't do the gigs at all, but I was trying to keep a foot in the door and challenge myself to continue making my music, even when I was being pulled in other directions.

I have started taking the steps I need to really know this music.  It is a much different process than it used to be.  A jazz waltz I composed called "In September" has a long form, non rhyming lyrics and complex harmony and I was having a heck of a time keeping everything going in order.  I'm so out of practice in this kind of work that it felt insurmountable.  That is when I have to ask myself what I would say if my student were in this predicament?  I ended up taking the first phrase and working at it for almost 30 minutes, until I had a few different ways to voice the harmonies, had gotten the sound in my ears and had managed to create enough melodic material that I felt I knew it.  That was Friday, and I managed to practice for 90 minutes straight while the baby napped. 

In a bizarre way, I felt like myself again.  I also felt a glimmer of hope that I will be able to make another CD and actually do some shows again.  I started seeing all of the possibilities again.  I have no idea when or how this is going to happen, so I'm going to focus on the task at hand: learning to play my music the best that I can and playing the next two shows completely off book.