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Picasso said: "You have to know the rules before you break the rules." He was right.

Thelonious Monk would have said, and maybe did, during his more lucid moments, "It's easier to make brand new rules if you're not distracted by the breakage of old rules because you never learned them in the first place."

Which perhaps explains why Bud Powell sounded so much a progression of the mainstream while Monk sounded like a visitor from the Tralfmadorian Interplanetary Jazz Exchange.

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Originally posted by kenmeer livermaile:

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Picasso said: "You have to know the rules before you break the rules." He was right.

Thelonious Monk would have said, and maybe did, during his more lucid moments, "It's easier to make brand new rules if you're not distracted by the breakage of old rules because you never learned them in the first place."

Which perhaps explains why Bud Powell sounded so much a progression of the mainstream while Monk sounded like a visitor from the Tralfmadorian Interplanetary Jazz Exchange.

As if he didn't know the rules. I'd bet he knew every rule, and every rule transgressor ever committed to vinyl.

Some people just can't help but break the rules.

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As if he didn't know the rules. I'd bet he knew every rule

Actually, the groovy thing about Monk is he was self-taught. Most jazz pianists were trained on classical music, and taught music theory.

Monk just dinked. Let's finesse the details for the both of our enlightenment:

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Little is known about Monk's early life. He was born on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk, two years after a sister named Marian. A younger brother, Thomas, was born a couple of years later. Monk started playing the piano at the age of nine; although he had some formal training and eavesdropped on his sister's piano lessons, he was essentially self-taught.

In 1922 the family moved to Manhattan living at 243 West 63rd St., and Monk attended Stuyvesant High School, but did not graduate.

He briefly toured with an evangelist in his teens, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. He is believed to be the pianist featured on recordings Jerry Newman made around 1941 at Minton's Playhouse, the legendary Manhattan club where Monk was the house pianist. His style at the time is described as "hard-swinging," with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences include Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists.

Monk's unique piano style was largely perfected during his stint as the house pianist at Minton's in the early-to-mid 1940s, when he participated in the famous after-hours "cutting competitions" that featured most of the leading jazz soloists of the day. The Minton's scene was crucial in the formulation of the bebop genre and it brought Monk into close contact and collaboration with other leading exponents of bebop including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and Milt Jackson.

Miles attended Julliard but cut a lot of classes and didn't finish. He learned enough of the rules to know how to break them *elegantly*.

Monk was probably schizophrenic. He didn't break them rules so much as the rules broke him. Anyway, he had mental issues:

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Monk's manner was idiosyncratic. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctively "hip" sartorial style in suits, hats and sunglasses, and he developed an unusual, highly syncopated and percussive manner of playing piano. He was also noted for the fact that at times he would stop playing, stand up from the keyboard and dance in a counterclockwise fashion, ring-shout style, while the other musicians in the combo played.

It is said that he would rarely speak to anyone other than his beloved wife Nellie, and certainly in later years it was reported that he would go through an entire tour without speaking to the other members of his group. Bassist Al McKibbon, who had known Monk for twenty years and played on his final tour in 1971, later said "On that tour Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn't say 'Good morning', 'Goodnight', 'What time?' Nothing. Why, I don't know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn't communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly." [1]

Although these anecdotes may typify Monk's behavior in his later life, in Lewis Porter's biography of John Coltrane, the saxophonist reveals a very different side of Monk; Coltrane states that Monk was, in his opinion:

"... exactly the opposite of Miles [Davis]. He talks about music all the time and wants so much for you to understand that if, by chance, you ask him something, he'll spend hours if necessary to explain it to you."

There has been speculation that some of Monk's quirky behaviour was due to mental illness. In the documentary film Straight, No Chaser (produced in 1989 by Clint Eastwood on the subject of Monk's life and music), Monk's son, T.S. Monk, reported that Monk was on several occasions hospitalized due to an unspecified mental illness that worsened in the late 1960s. No diagnosis was ever made public, but some have noted that Monk's symptoms suggest bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or Tourette's Syndrome. Whatever the precise diagnosis, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that Monk was suffering from some form of pathological introversion and that from the late sixties onward he became increasingly uncommunicative and withdrawn. As his health declined, his last years were spent as a guest in the New Jersey home of his long-standing patron, Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, who had also nursed Charlie Parker during his final illness.

Counter-clockwise. Someone observed this pattern over a series of performances?

I think he partly stopped talking because he didn't like the bug-eyed stares he got in response to his gibberish. His daughter relates that, at least later in his life, he would speak the more or less equivalent of Martian, and this created problems.

I should enjoy writing a small slice of life piece on the love between Monk & Nellie. Perhaps as seen through the eyes of their goldfish?

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John Coltrane described the difficulties of playing with Monk: "I always had to be alert with Monk, because if you didn't keep aware all the time of what was going on you'd suddenly feel as if you'd stepped into an empty elevator shaft."

Those "cutting competitions" were fierce. If he hadn't known the rules, if he was playing gibberish, like an untrained child, he would have been laughed right out the door. (if not manhandled)

Just because he was self-trained doesn't mean he didn't understand what "the experts" were doing.

Shit, if he could make Coltrane feel like he was falling down an elevator shaft..... 'nuff said.


I think he understood the rules enough to know how to bend 'em. And I think he enjoyed his "unique" reputation. The caliber of people he played with speaks for itself.

Oh hell, I'm trying not to thread jack.

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Those "cutting competitions" were fierce. If he hadn't known the rules, if he was playing gibberish, like an untrained child, he would have been laughed right out the door. (if not manhandled)

Just because he was self-trained doesn't mean he didn't understand what "the experts" were doing.

What I'm saying is that he learned how to make music without going to the school the rest did. There are any number of musical composition theories with their given sets of rules. They are virtually all based on octave scales, on the pleasant harmony of fourths and fifths as opposed to the strident discord of seconds and flatted seconds.

A guy can learn a lot that way. I'm sure that somewhere along the line someone showed him the circle of fifths although he might have discovered that on his own.

What I'm saying is that he wasn't breaking the 'same' rules they were. He'd learned the principles from a different learning curve. ON the way, he learned 'weak points' and 'resonant nodes' that weren't obvious to others, that allowed him to drop Coltrane down an empty elevator et not vice versa.

This thinking I got from interviews with musicians who played with Monk.

I never said he didn't understand what the 'experts' were doing. What I mean is that he understood what they were doing in a different way, and that some of that difference is because he *learned* it in a different way.

Folks raised within a system can't scam it the way someone raised outside can scam that system. Comes with the territory of literally learning/thinking outside the box.

"If he hadn't known the rules, if he was playing gibberish, like an untrained child, he would have been laughed right out the door. (if not manhandled)

"When I read this, it says to me that 'if he hadn't been taught the rules in the same way his colleagues had, he would a) play gibberish and b) not understand how and why they were playing what they did well enough to integrate with musical interaction satisfactory to the demanding standards of these stellar musicians'.

I find neither premise solidly based as a reply to what I said (you inject some of your own bias into my premises, I feel) nor as an example of the musical understanding achieved by someone who mostly taught himself.

Putting the latter thought differently: what one learns oneself is not necessarily the rule to be broken but simply the principle to be expanded upon. The idea of 'breaking the rules' need not even occur to someone who has acquired their understanding of the requisite mechanics through their own, unique, heuristic, empirical forays. They naturally think differently about the rules. SOme of the rules don't appear to them as rules but simply interesting patterns or such.

"Threadjack?"

This is 'whoa news', yes? We've got whoa enough between us, I think.

k.l., I see yr. point about thinking outside the box. Very nearly everything I know comes from outside the box.

as to threadjacking, I meant that this is a news thread. Monk, Coltrane and Miles just haven't been in the news lately.

Also, jeez guys, it's just an analogy. A solid understanding of the fundamentals, however you get it, is important to doing work which transcends those fundamental principles, sometimes by violating them (or seeming to). It's not like everybody except for Monk was looking at an actual rule book and deciding which rules to break.

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Originally posted by colin:
Also, jeez guys, it's just an analogy. A solid understanding of the fundamentals, however you get it, is important to doing work which transcends those fundamental principles, sometimes by violating them (or seeming to). It's not like everybody except for Monk was looking at an actual rule book and deciding which rules to break.

Exactly. My. Point.

I won't talk any more in the news thread about music.

More US Warcraft players than farmers
Posted by Cory Doctorow, October 21, 2007 10:36 AM | permalink
Next time President Bush tells you he's going to Crawford to be with "real Americans," remind him that there are more World of Warcraft players in the USA than there are farmers (though of course the two aren't mutually exclusive).
There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Bureau of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these "What does America think about culture" pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30's software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of "The IT Crowd"? Fuck and no.
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:

ANDERSON: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.

UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.

No. No I do not.

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2006/03/farm-fetish.html

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Monk, Coltrane and Miles just haven't been in the news lately.

Bebop and beyond ghosts just don't get no media respect. And it PISSES me duh fuckoff!

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It's not like everybody except for Monk was looking at an actual rule book and deciding which rules to break.

Of course not. But I read some of his peers saying, in some kind of roundtable interview or something like that, how Monk broke the rules so WELL because he had so little grounding in the traditional teaching of said rules.

That's all the point I'z making. Maybe being schizo was part of his advantage too. Who Knows? But then, being schizo means your rules have already been broken.

Let me be persnicketty exact: Monk had very little of the classically defined curricula that is a major music education. How he learned what he learned was largely on his own. An initial breakage of the rules, that.

"You didn't practice Clementi's scales?"

'Nope.'

"You didn't read Walter Piston on Harmony ands Counterpoint?"

'Who him?'

"Play me a Bflat minor extended 13th."

'OK.'

(arpeggio...)

"Close but no cigar. THIS is a bflat minor extended 13th."

'Why you harmonize the 7th off the tonic when it LOVES the subdominant?'

"Well, uh, 'cause that's how my teacher showed me."

'Oh.'

Who is breaking whom's rules in the above?

Least likely pimp evar!!

I just can't imagine that particular man hustling like that.
Can't do it.

Dammit, Boog, not one single use of the phrase "upside yo' head" in the article at all.

Clearly the guy is bullshitting us.

lol....I just wish this had come out when Will Ferril was doing SNL, his impersionation of Lipton was dead on.

1. What is your favorite word?

Cash.

2. What is your least favorite word?

Check.

3. What turns you on?

Whatchoo got, baby?

4. What turns you off?

Traveller's Checks.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

Freebie.

6. What sound or noise do you love?

My hand slappin' some rich boys ass!

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

That noise the ATM make, like, when it's outta money. Or that sound a car door makes, like when, you accidentally kick it open and your thing falls into the street and it's like raining, you know?


8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I think I'd be good at one of the CSIers.

9. What profession would you not like to attempt?

I wouldn't wanna have to be no hot dog maker, ya know?

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Exit only.

This could be good news, we'll have to see.

Bin Laden Tape, Drop in Iraq Violence

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/bin-laden-t...in-iraq-violence/?hp

“The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group … the interest of the (Islamic) nation is more important than that of a state,” said a voice which sounded like the al Qaeda leader’s."

Why does this sound like Spock?

Islamovulcanism?

Sign of the times. Japanese style.

Urban Camouflage

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TOKYO, Oct. 19 — On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.

The wearer hides behind the sheet, printed with an actual-size photo of a vending machine. Ms. Tsukioka’s clothing is still in development, but she already has several versions, including one that unfolds from a kimono and a deluxe model with four sides for more complete camouflaging.

These elaborate defenses are coming at a time when crime rates are actually declining in Japan. But the Japanese, sensitive to the slightest signs of social fraying, say they feel growing anxiety about safety, fanned by sensationalist news media. Instead of pepper spray, though, they are devising a variety of novel solutions, some high-tech, others quirky, but all reflecting a peculiarly Japanese sensibility.

Hmmm, this is all well and good but what happens when someone tries to put money in your vending machine disguise?

More >>> Urban Camouflage

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Hmmm, this is all well and good but what happens when someone tries to put money in your vending machine disguise?

'Not only does it hide you from predators, it pays for itself!'