38 Going for the Sounds

I did things for two or three hours a day that seemed more orless reasonable. I practiced certain well-known technical exercisesthat I heard many musicians had used, spent lots of time investi-gating the keyboard to discover new sorts of melodic configura-tions, found ever-new intervallic relationships, evolved morepathways constructed on principles similar to those I’d been toldabout, with their characteristic jazz sounds, listened to a growingcollection of records, seldom trying and always quickly abandon-ing the horrendous task of solo copying, and aimed for what I feltto be the most sophisticated and intricate examples of contempo-rary jazz piano. For the most part, my playing sessions weredevoted to a handful of songs, doing improvisations, the particu-lar handful’s contents changing entirely every several months, assome tunes became more enticing and others a bit less so.

Fluent manipulation on these paths produced a semblance ofcompetence, and I was able to sustain long playing sessions,going for this rapidly articulated music, sensing I was on target.I knew my play left qualities to be desired. When I recordedmyself it sounded disjointed, frantic, and wanting in otherrespects. I knew I wasn’t making music like what I heard. Butby virtue of the sheer extent of what I could do at the piano, thelarge collection of songs at my command, and what I felt to beincreasingly an insider’s perspective on the music I listened to,after a couple of years I thought of myself as one with nearlycompetent basic jazz skills.

In some respects that was warranted, in others pretentiouslypremature. I was in some ways as far from the mark as couldbe. Of course this was only clear in retrospect, as deficiencies inearlier efforts were made transparent by acquisitions gainedlater. But this delayed appraisal allowed me to sustain motiva-tion to play a good deal without feeling too far off base.

I was learning to play in what can be loosely termed a back-ward direction. In first language acquisition, one initially gains