Category: Live

Last night’s new tune is a vibey, vampy tune that’s great for improvising.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s not just about writing a catchy tune; a jazz tune is also a launching pad for soloing. You can have a great song that just doesn’t feel right for improvisation. It needs to have enough interest to catch the listener’s attention, but be simple enough that the performers can feel comfortable soloing over the changes. But not too simple! Then it gets boring. Clearly, there’s a balance that needs to be struck.

“Mysterious Lee” is halfway between Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” and ” Gershwin’s “Summertime.” It has the former’s prominent opening bass line and the latter’s mid-song lift and ii7-5 V7 turnaround. I don’t think we ever got the actual melody right in this recording, but you can hear that everyone dug into their solos with gusto.

Just for fun, I left a little of the musician’s prattle in the recording. Yes, these gigs are work, but we also have an awful lot of fun!

Spinal Tap’s song “Big Bottom” is a classic. And classy. But as a bass player, I feel the world needs more songs featuring the bass, not less. Enter “Big Bottom Blues.”

Similar to Miles Davis’ iconic “So What,” the bass takes a lead role in “Big Bottom Blues.” After the bassist has had their moment to shine, the song continues as a minor jazz blues.

This was recorded at the warm-up for a gig last week. We were still working out the kinks, but it gives you an idea of what the song is about. This quick run-through captured on my iPhone will have to suffice until a later date when a definitive recording is released.

Today’s jazz offering is “Slowly.” It is a song about approaching a new relationship cautiously after being hurt in love. Of course, what do I have to say on this subject that hasn’t been said more eloquently and succinctly by the bards of Great White?: “My, my, my, I’m once bitten twice shy baby.” (Actually, I just listened to Great White’s song again. It’s horrible.)

The recording was rendered almost unusable by background noise. For some reason, everyone in the bar came over to talk to us during the few minutes that the new song premiered. I should have discarded the recording entirely, except part of the background noise is the restaurant owner saying “This is perfection!” and comparing it to “Days of Wine and Roses.”

Some day I’ll record this song with a first-rate crooner and full orchestra. Until then, the Scheer Bliss Trio at Euro Bistro will have to suffice.

In honor of my birthday*: a song about getting older and slower.

The song is something of a musical pun. One of the standard song forms in jazz is “Rhythm Changes.” This form uses the chords from Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm” as a starting point, then builds new melodies on top of this basic harmonic structure. Charlie Parker was especially famous for this form of musical contrafact, with rhythm change songs such as “Anthropology,” “Dexterity,” and “Moose the Mooche.”

As I’ve learned various rhythm changes songs, I find myself wondering, “Why are these so dang fast? I’m too old for this!” Thus was born the idea of a lethargic rhythm change song suitable for jazz musicians who are getting old and slow. Indeed, the lyrical theme is also about getting older and slower–and being content as these slow changes occur.

Though the song is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the lyrics touch on deeper issues of the life cycle and were inspired in part by Joan Chittister’s book, The Gif of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.

_{*October 5. Gifts will be accepted annually throughout the entire month of October.}

It’s not often that I pen something happy. I mean, just happy, with no twinges of melancholy, conflict, or nostalgia. I’m a content person, generally, but enough of a realist to understand that light needs shadow to have any meaning at all. But just this once I made an exception and wrote something that is all joy, beginning to end. To all you disappointed pessimists who follow my music: I’m sorry. It just came out that way!

The song started as a little bass riff I made up while testing out some new strings. Like most of my music, it started as a seed and grew into something quite different. Not to nerd out on you, but the fundamental problem I was having was that the original melody mirrored the bass line, creating parallel octaves and a king of hokey opening melody. I woke up one day with this new opening melody in my head and all the pieces fell together. Now the song starts with a melody that takes off like a rocket, leaping an octave and a 6th in two measures.

Because the song has a jazz gospel feel, I named it “The Gospel Truth” as soon as I began working on it. It turns out there are lots and lots of “Gospel Truths” out there: songs, books, bands, CD collections, concert series, preacher podcasts, etc. Oh well, I guess if this song gets popular, they’ll have to call it “The Gospel Truth According to Greg Scheer.”

It should be noted that the violinist, Susan Mora, promised me she wouldn’t talk during the recording. And yet, a minute and mere minute and nine seconds after making that promise, she leaned over and said, “It’s very happy!” What would my Euro Bistro recordings be without Susan’s commentary?

I continue playing my bass each week with a jazz trio at a local restaurant and I continue to write new songs for said trio. I try to do something different each time: a different style, mood, or tempo. Sometimes I base a new song on an existing standard: Brubeck’s “Take 5” becomes my “Take 3.0” or Jobim’s “One Note Samba” becomes “The One More Note Samba,” for example. I figure my songs will be more likely to be played if I can slip them in beside a similar classic.

But his time I actually stole from myself. I was thinking about how my rap song “We Know the Changes,” would make a mighty fine jazz-funk groove. I began playing with some melodies that might work on top of the chords from that song (called a “contrafact” in musical terms), but it soon morphed into an entirely different thing.

“Everybody Knows” ended up as an A minor groove that pivots up and down a step on phrase two and four. That’s a cool way to keep things simple without getting boring. As you can hear from this recording from last night, the trio took to it like fish to water.

I probably won’t use the words with this one, but I include them here for posterity:

1. Everybody knows
and there’s no denying.
Everybody knows
And you know it, too.
Everybody knows
try to hide it, but it shows.
Everybody knows, everybody knows
when they fall in love.

2. Everybody knows
they can’t fight the feeling.
Everybody knows
it’ll only grow.
Everybody knows
just give in and let it flow.
Everybody knows, everybody knows
when they fall in love.

“Iguana” began its life as a bass line. I wanted to write a groove-oriented jazz tune like Herbie Hancock’s iconic “Chameleon.” (“Chameleon”…”Iguana” Get it?) The bass line soon morphed from a dirty funk into a smoother, jazz fusion groove with an ever-ascending harmonic sequence. While I was working on the melody I was also memorizing Thelonius Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser.” I was fascinated (and a little bit infuriated) by the way Monk takes one melodic motif and then shifts it to different positions in the meter each time it appears. A little of that leaked into “Iguana.”

The final test for any jazz tune–especially a groove-oriented one–is how well it works with real musicians soloing over its form. The first version of Iguana unraveled in that setting. The form was AABA, but the final A was so similar to the first two that no one ever knew when the song started again! In this final version, I simplified the form to AAB with a clear cadence marking the way back to the beginning. Voila! It worked like a charm.