Jane Miller: Newsletter

i usually remember to prepare my students for what feels like seconds between the time we come back from thanksgiving break until the end of the semester. the thing is, i'm just as surprised as everyone else every year anyway. so now there is snow in my yard, holiday decorations and christmas music all over the place, a silly dog catching snow flakes and zooming around while i scrape off the car and send snowballs in her direction,hot chocolate, and well, you get the picture. let's see, cold, boots, hats, gloves, christmas music; oh, right...it's time for mark marquis' annual christmas show this coming weekend. the 20th annual,no less. this will be my 18th year playing with the gang (i missed the first 2, but i think he will still give me pizza at the after party anyway). check the calendar page for details. highly recommended to put you in good spirits and to help children in need of some christmas toys. see you there.

The fantastic e-zine, "Guitar Sessions," which is a part of the Mel Bay web site, will be making the switch to the November issue soon. I contributed a piece on the Thanksgiving song, "We Gather Together." Ah, Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for about a billion things.
Here's a link:
http://www.guitarsessions.com

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i walked around fenway park the other day and stopped to pat the statue of ted williams on the knee.

don't tell anyone but the leaves are getting rather pretty around here.

my dear friend sonia is playing at club passim on wednesday october 3. there was some talk of me sitting in on a tune, but whatever happens, catch her show wherever you live; she's touring and celebrating her newest recording called "tango," which is an amazing project. also, she will be visiting one of my classes at berklee, so i will get to hear her music a lot this week. i recommend it to you, too, and i also recommend being happy. it's very cool.

the mcm trio will be at the acton jazz cafe on september 15th. we're doing the early show; it's a perfect time for dinner and jazz with us. later that night, myanna will be there with her group, which is an excellent jazz/r+b group. mcm (cercie miller on sax, david clark on bass, and me on guitars) has not played in acton in quite some time, so we're really looking forward to being there again. it's a feel good gig. lots of excellent listeners. we love that. also, yes, cercie and myanna were the two sax players in "girls night out" for you trivia buffs, so what a fun night all around. i've played with myanna a bunch, too, and she is a very special real deal great player. i think you'll want to make a night of it.
see you there.
http://www.actonjazzcafe.com

or years. or days. there's nothing worse than some pretentious writer going way hogwild overboard on hyperbole while discussing their garden as a metaphor for life itself.
i'm sorry. but my tomatoes are so awesome.
i've been told, and i've told others, that what you're practicing on your instrument now will begin to come out in your playing in about six months. taking classes, studying, working on a piece for a performance; it's all a little like shopping. (wait, what happened to the garden metaphor...). we gather and collect and take things away and come back to our home base and start to sort through our bags. or maybe we move and go through things we haven't seen in awhile and make the tough decisions about what stays, what goes, what finds a new home, what takes on a new role. once we have the gift of time to look it all over, think about the contexts, the textures, the shapes, then we can really make it work in ways that make sense to us. i've paid good money for things while shopping and listened to someone schpeil on about how it works or what it does, but it's not until i get it home and work with it in my own way that i really get at what it's all about. and it might be very different from what the experts say or from what the next person in line says.
so if you feel like you can't play today, it's because you didn't practice six months ago. if you are having a great time playing and interacting musically and making sense of things that you collected six months ago, congratulations. it's working. it's time to pick the tomatoes. it's time to clear out the closets. it's time to rearrange that bookcase or move that cd collection. or listen to that music you had forgotten all about and really hear what's going on for the first time ever. and then play play play and hear and feel what happens. it doesn't happen every day. it takes months. years. minutes. days. lifetimes. four bars. entire choruses. paragraphs. all seven harry potter books. one sentence. one small workable phrase at a time.

my dog betty and i set out on our morning walk today and, since i reached the top of the hill first, i was the first and only one of us to see the red fox hanging out below in the field. i decided it would be best if we stayed around at the top of the hill for awhile this morning. improvising over changes, you see. we settled in on the lawn which is not a bad way to spend a july morning anyway, and betty had her nose engaged the whole time. there's just no fooling that kid. now she's snoozing in the big chair next to my desk, which i thought was going to be my chair, but i was wrong; it's clearly betty's. soon we'll head back out, maybe on the same path, maybe a slightly different one. i read up on red foxes and they're not so bad. you just have to have breakfast and a nap and some hot water in a mug and decide that it's ok to be a little bit sleepy on a low pressure almost rainy day and use a pick instead of playing fingerstyle and listen for what the piano player does and enter the measure in a different place and start out at a different time and respond to a few unexpected bits of news and respond to a happy situation and maintain and adjust and see that those four bars are way over with and betty forgot all about it and we'll go back out later.

back back back back gone...
that's what i keep hearing. it's not a real game, of course. it's the night before the all-star game. there is someone-some manager or other-standing behind a screen lobbing in cream puffs for the heavy hitters of major league baseball to crush over everything. it's really fun to watch and to see just what these hitters can make a ball do. how far can it travel in the san fransisco sky. it's not a real game but it's pretty cool.

laying down a basic rhythm track for yourself is a great way to practice improvising over changes or working on endurance or speed or picking or melodic lines of any sort. bam. bam. look at those 16th notes fly over the golden gate bridge or the prudential building. ooh. ahh. look at how that angular pattern of 4ths bursts into a colorful display over the rocky shore of kennebunk. you can make all kinds of things happen when someone (even your computer) is handing you the right tool. feeding you the right word. laying down a simple groove. standing by to listen and watch.
in a real game, players interact. they respond to each others' moves and cues and hits and misses. they back each other up. they fool each other and adjust for the spontaneous curves and change ups. in real music, we listen and respond and play and adjust. we have some of the necessary tools for the game because we practice home run derby all the time. but we only get better at playing the game when we really get to play the game.
like when we comp for our friends. let our friends comp for us. comp for ourselves rather than telling our computers to do it for us. it doesn't have a soul and a heart and ears and a sense of humor and whatever all else it takes to make us play with each other in real life.

bam. there goes another one over everything. the guy's got chops; you gotta give him that.

my dog betty has a few friends in the neighborhood. they share toys and sticks and walks in the woods. they come into our house and drink from betty's water bowl, which she hardly ever does (betty prefers showers, but that's a story for another time). betty still has puppy energy and sometimes gets the zooms when she's excited about something. i know when it's about to happen. she gets the look and then she's off like a shot, all streamlined and pretty and windblown. anyway, they all know where they each live and which toys and bones they will find at each others' houses and where the cats hang out and where the food bowls are and who their people are and what their cars sound like when they are coming home. they are clear about their home base.
yesterday, i was talking about right hand finger style patterns for guitar and how much more efficient it is when you really practice the concept of each finger having its own string to play. it's not a strummy kind of movement, it's a closing in of the fingers; bending. each one gets its own place to be in charge. T12321 pick a bass note and use the first three open strings and just do that over and over again and you will get the clarity of it. practice in your head, on your knee, on the steering wheel, and especially on the open strings of your guitar while the red sox game is on. ok, be a little sensitive to your loved ones-people and animals that are trying to watch the game or sleep. from this practice comes independence and control over your right hand (or picking hand, as it is so correctly called in acoustic guitar magazine so as to cover whichever dominant hand type you may be) and from there, so many things can happen: that's my melody note. ok, well, then these are my filler notes. yeah, and over here, i'll take care of the accompaniment part. ok, but just let me play the bass notes all the time, got it?
wheeeeee. oh, that was betty taking off with her friend's tennis ball. ok, so there's always room for creativity and individual interpretation.
enjoy.

input. blue sky. above 80 degrees. cool grass that is finally dry enough to sit in. special bone for betty. the rhythm is both random and steady. her teeth set up a steady groove on the edges and the occasional slip and the weighty drop make unexpected accents. fenway park. green gray brown red. steady murmur. crack. loud swells. boats. paddles. swoosh. swoosh. drip. drip. background music for simple chores. instead, i sit listening. it's coming from itunes. it's coming from betty. it's coming from the red sox. it's coming through the window. it's input. it's about to find the wood and the strings and the newness of creating. there's a vegetable garden growing in my big back yard. there's a rose garden smiling brightly in boston. there's room between buildings and cement and asphalt. there's room for all of it to find a path somewhere between the lemonade and the view and the scent of betty sleeping between my guitar and the red sox on tv. there's room on the collage to add something.

that simply lemonade is good stuff.

wow, that was a good nap.

ok, so anyway, the new issue of acoustic guitar magazine is on the stands-it's the july issue and i wrote a lesson for the woodshed column called "visualizing changes." i hope you'll get a chance to check it out. it's also online at
http://www.acousticguitar.com as a matter of fact, the online version has the correct chords to my new song that i wrote for the lesson called "the shape of things." you can hear audio examples there, too. this month's password is firecracker.

things i like: little martin guitars, raezor's edge speakers, k+k pickups, being able to start the lawn mower, and dog walks.

good morning-good to see you again.

i'm working on an arranging project for acoustic guitars. if any of you have suggestions for acoustic players or tunes, please send them along either via email or the guestbook. modern contemporary, early days of the guitar, and anything in between will be interesting to consider.
thanks.

http://www.acousticguitar.com/woodshed
the password, which is available for all to see in the early pages of the current edition of the magazine on newstands now, is that bird lots of people eat on thanksgiving.

i did a bossa nova lesson.

big puppy chewing on keyboard stand-gotta go.

p.s.-you can hear recorded examples of the exercises, which makes it cool to practice, if you're into it.

did you ever get so deep into practicing something that you forget about the basics that are not only valid, but pretty wonderful and important to use? i suspect a lot of guitar players have that happening, especially because learning about position playing and movable forms, whether melodic or harmonic, is so critical in understanding the instrument. if we back up a bit from that, however, and remember the joy of the sound of the guitar, the ringing out of open strings, there is new magic to be found. remember what you love about the tone, the wood, the feel of the open strings next to the fingered notes. combine that with the newness of climbing to new heights up the neck. side by side, there's a note way up high on the fretboard right there next to an open string singing low. the right hand might be temporarily confused, but then it joins in with the excitement of newness all over again. choose a constant bass note and try some different scales on top of it using open strings wherever they can fit in. maybe you learned a D major scale as a beginner using open strings in the first position, but when you hear that against a G bass note, it becomes a G lydian with all of its beauty and angst and sophistication and, in fact, reasons for learning those basic scales in the first place.
maybe we learn one thing on top of another our whole lives; building on some foundation, discarding what we don't need, adding cool new things to our stash, sometimes trying to fit too many notes where they don't belong, sometimes trusting the basics and remembering how well our instincts guide us if we let go and listen.

hi folks-
the e-zine for guitarists on the mel bay web site is a fun and informative place to visit on line.
this month's issue is up and viewable:

http://www.guitarsessions.com
i wrote a fingerstyle lesson for that page this month in case any of you guitarists want to check that out. it's a little exercise to try out on a chord progression you'll recognize.
have fun.

here's a fun link and it supports a wonderful organization:
http://www.cafepress.com/neads
some of you may know that i adopted a puppy back in april when she was just 8 weeks old. she had been bred to be a guide dog for the blind, but decided against it after some testing. good decision for both of us. the people at NEADS had referred me to the Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Patterson, NY about 2 years ago. NEADS raises and trains assistance and service dogs here in central massachusetts. they recently put out a call for photos and it turns out my little betty, who is 7 months old and big now, won honorable mention in the calendar contest. that's her on the bottom of the july page running through a field with her tail up.
the above link will take you to pictures of the calendars for sale and provide links for ordering them. they make great gifts and the money for NEADS is a very good thing. the puppy pictures will make you feel as good as acoustic guitar music on an autumn afternoon, and the folks who need NEADS and their wonderful dogs will thrive on.

it's harvest time around here. there's an inviting and warm smell of wood fires in the air now and then around the neighborhood. there are morning walks with my dog which gradually have involved a couple of extra steps before getting out the door; let me just grab that jacket.

in acoustic guitar magazine, there's a column called "the woodshed" in which contributing writers share some lessons with players looking for some challenging new practice material to start a new climb. the november issue is out and this month's woodshed is a story and some musical examples from me about playing fingerstyle in the tradition of american folk music and seeing that through to playing some bossa nova. the on-line version of the magazine will have recorded examples of the written examples as they appear in the article. i just love those guys at acoustic guitar mag and i hope you'll get a chance to check it out if you're interested.
much more later-long overdue stories of vibrational healing and the betar and my aching knee and the pretty yellow dog and playing and writing and writing and playing and teaching teaching teaching. there, maybe i did just tell the story. nah-there'll be more later.
'til next time,stay safe, have an apple, watch the peanuts great pumpkin special again and again, and listen to fun music.
jane

a cute little dog nose touches the back of my hand. never the other way around, unless it's very gentle and loving. "touch." bop. then a quick look to the other hand. sure enough, a treat is there. i move my hand somewhere else. "touch." bop. look. "catch." snap. my hand holds "funny monkey," our current favorite stuffed toy. "touch." again with the nose bop, this time on funny monkey's belly. "where's funny monkey? get funny." trot trot trot. then loud laughter escalating into wild jungle sounds. funny monkey has been caught and tickled and squeezed and is now screaming as betty runs her back to me.
touch. i am touched by a piece written by lucy holstedt, for which i arranged a guitar part. betty the six month old dog decides it would be cool to get in on the collaboration and brings funny monkey to lucy's feet under the piano. let's put funny monkey away for now, pal. what's the difference between improv and composition? there's no punch line. just wondering. what's the difference between a puppy who wants to be recognized and musicians at work? not much, sometimes.
"touch." someone gets a kick out of me and puts both hands on one of my arms leaning into me, having a good laugh. i notice it whenever it happens again because i like that. bop. look to the other hand.
positive reinforcement. persistent optimism. benevolent leadership. artful respect. good morning mary sunshine. how did you wake so soon? da da da da da da da da and shined away the moon. happy conversations that happen in one second our time, one hour someone else's time. too bad. so good.
"touch." bop. look. "look." two little squinty eyes like little opie looking up in the sunlight wondering what will happen next. how could it be anything but good? touch. nice and gentle.
teach. benevolent. positive. reinforcement. when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. is the teacher ready? what would you like to learn? betty come. go get it. should this be a diminshed 7th chord or a dominant 7 flat nine? oh my god, what's the difference, can't we just go swimming? nice and gentle. positive. run like a pretty wind. zoom zoom zoom. massage therapy, pretty guitar music, very sore knee, touch. music on a vibrational level. music so deep that it is completely simple and basic and makes me dream about the essence of touch.
touch. out the door. oh, my aching knee.
run like the wind, betty-i'll catch up.
it's a happy latin groove on a major chord and it's touching and promising and fun.
when the teacher is ready, she will write more.
sleep sleep sleep.

hi folks,
come on out to the acton jazz cafe on friday night to catch the doug lowe group. well, it's actually my trio with doug on saxophone playing his material and some standards that he has chosen. details on the calendar page, or visit
http://www.actonjazzcafe.com
stay safe.

here's a fun link which will take you to a page on my friend SONiA's web site.

http://soniadf.com/slide_show.php?mon=other&yr=pets&rows=18

when fran lebowitz' book by that name came out in the early 80s, she was prompted during an interview with a boston tv news anchor: "and it is the sudy of..."
"social," was, of course,her response.
it's remarkable to think of just how many social skills most of us have together. i mean, i can pretty much get through a gig without too many three stooges moments. that gets a bit more challenging when i'm with bob and don, but still.
now that i have a four month old puppy, i can see where zero is. betty is beyond that, but closer to that end of the scale than, say, i am. for example, here's what went into her mouth today on a routine trip to the lake: a piece of old fish skin with scales, an unidentified kid's sponge football, my wrist, sand, pine cones, dog (or was it cat) poop with a side of pine needles, water and treats given by me in an attempt to flush out the previous stuff, a pine cone, a plastic lid, a frisbee for about one second, pop corn, seconds on the poop with pine needles, and more water and treats with disapproving looks from me.
on the other hand, she very skillfully socialized with a couple of people, including a woman who just thought she was the sweetest most well behaved calm puppy as betty sat up close snuggling against her legs and looking up angelically at her. this was immediately following her second helping of...well, let's move on.
i am tinkering with some new arrangement ideas, and betty is peaceful while i practice guitar. that's a blessing.
she is sleeping off the day right now under my chair, now and then moaning and stretching, and i wonder just how long it will be before she comes to the full realization that she shouldn't have eaten that. who hasn't had that feeling after a summer holiday party.
hope you can join bob and don and me at the heaing light institute concert for peace on july 15. full details in the calendar section of this site.
also, i hope you'll have a chance to read the tales from the road story on the mel bay web site.
http://www.guitarsession.com click on tales from the road.
please feel free to sign the guestbook here and let us all know how you're doing and what else we could be bringing to you on this site.
see you in a couple of weeks.

wo, i really left you hanging for awhile on this one. didn't mean to, you know. here are some names for that chord i was writing about last may, for you guitar players:
E-7 (11)
A9sus4
G6/9
D6/9 (sus4)
Cmaj9(13)
Fma9(#11,13)
B-7#5(11)

some you might love, some you might never use. it's just nice to have some options.

my trio will be playing at a concert for peace in worcester, ma on july 15th. check the calendar page for specifics. my good friend sonia and disappear fear will be there, too. so will kim and reggie harris, whom you must hear and see. they are wonderful.

i'm working on another piece for the mel bay e zine "guitar sessions." it's for their "tales from the road" column, and it should be in the july issue. this one is tearing me up emotionally, but i hope you'll think it's a good story.

little betty wants to be supreme ruler of the universe, but i told her i already have that job, so she can just carry sticks. two control freaks trying to live together. sheesh.

hope to see you in july. peace.

I'll write some news soon, but in the meantime, check out this month's Mel Bay Guitar Sessions web site. I contributed the City Scene column.

http://www.guitarsessions.com/
oh, also, yes that's me in the Acoustic Guitar magazine Reader's Rig column in the current issue. early in the magazine, there's a very small preview picture, promoting their on-line stories. on the opposite page, there happens to be an add for epiphone guitars with a great big picture of paul mccartney. my mother saw it and said "oh there you are opposite what's-his-name."

(the profile of me being a gear-head is found more toward the back of the magazine).

here's one for you: put your first finger across the 7th fret barring the first 5 strings (EBGDA). add your second finger to the 8th fret on the 2nd string (B string). what chord do you get? what do you want to call it?

name all of the notes that you have under your fingers. then think it through this way: if E is the root, what would the other notes be and then what could i call this chord? if A is the root, what could i call it; if G is the root, etc. etc.

ready for answers?

the notes are, from the bass notes to the high notes: EADGB. sound familiar? like the way the guitar is tuned. so, if E is the root, then here's how it lines up: E-1, A-11, D-b7, G-b3, B-5. so let's call it
E-7(11). nice chord.
continue on with each note taking a turn being the root (what would the bass player play) and get a new chord name each time. that's a baragin. but don't stop there- what if the bass player plays a C? how about F? keep going. let me know what you come up with. it's a great deal when you can grab a pretty easy to grab chord ("nice holds" as they say in nashville) and be able to use it in so many contexts.

answers next time. or you tell me.

what's new? well, i am wrapping up the semester at berklee, i have tilled the garden, i got strawberry and raspberry plants in the mail, i played a fun gig with dave clark and willie sordillo, one coming up with cercie miller and dave clark on may 25th, and i have been solidifying some writing ideas. i have been sleep deprived. oh, and i have been playing with betty, my new puppy.

really, i've just been mostly doing that last thing. playing, feeding, caring for, training, cuddling with, being horrified by, being awestruck by betty, elizabeth the great, the smartest cutest most mischievous little yellow lab in the world. she's the only being in my life who couldn't care less about the condition of my hands. guitar player, schmitar player- i'm biting them. sleep, schmeep-let's go outside.

ok, cutie-i'll be right there.

well, it's not a new tune, really. not by a long shot, actually. but it's newly available to you. check out the music page and scroll down to find a solo guitar version of "gratitude." it's unreleased; can't find it anywhere else. please drop me a line to let me know what you think of it, and of the idea of making things like this available from time to time.
happy spring.