Let’s look at the tune “Feather Report.” The inspiration for that tune came about from the obvious word play in the title. It’s so easy to listen now - take advantage of the technology! The Internet has led me to newer groups like Groove Collection and Dirty Loops. Sometimes it’s Tower of Power, sometimes it’s Jaco Pastorius, sometimes it’s James Brown’s great recordings. When I look back at the flock of chicken tunes I have written, I see influences from listening to a lot of funky music. It can help suggest an idea for a new tune or possibly solve a problem with particular part of a chart.
As a writer of music, everything you listen to becomes part of you - it’s mentally digested and becomes part of your internal jazz vocabulary. We listen to jazz, we listen to classical, we listen to just about every type of music. The same idea is true for arrangers and composers.
We learn their licks in all 12 keys and we learn how to manipulate those licks to fit into our playing. When learning to improvise, we (jazz musicians) listen all the time to great players. I think the key here is listening - lots and lots of listening. So where do I get all those ideas for new chicken tunes. For example “ Tastes Like Chicken,” “ Chicken Scratch,” “ Poultry in Motion,” “ R U Chicken?,” “ Fowl Play,” “ Pecking Order,” “ Rule the Roost,” “ Flew The Coop,” “ Feather Report,” “ No Spring Chicken,” and the most recent chart, new for 2012, “ Talk is Cheep.” I am not sure which will happen first, running out of ideas for tunes or running out of titles! If you are familiar with some of these, you know that they are all funky, blues-based tunes with challenging lines for everyone, especially the bass player. More importantly, that chart has egged on an entire franchise of fun funk tunes, all with chicken titles. Again, another blessing and I thank everyone for playing the chart (keep posting those videos on Youtube, they’re great!).
I’m proud to say that “The Chicken” has gone on to become one of the best-selling big band charts of all time. I actually wrote the arrangement as a grad student in college and then years later had the blessing of getting it published. I believe number 13 is in the works! It all started last century with an arrangement I did of a tune called “The Chicken,” composed by Alfred James “Pee Wee” Ellis, a sax player with James Brown and Van Morrison, and popularized by one of my favorite bass players, Jaco Pastorius. It’s true I have written a bucket full of chicken charts. How do I get started writing a big band chart? What’s up with all those “chicken” charts? I get many, many questions from young jazz students, but these are two of the most common: My name is Kris Berg and I am director of jazz studies at Collin College in Texas and a longtime composer/arranger for Alfred. Talk is Cheep, Kris Berg’s newest chicken-themed title from the 2012-2013 new jazz ensemble releases!
0 kommentar(er)
