Transcription of head from first song of first album
El cometa electrico (head) PDF
Transcription of solo (first chorus)
Transcripción solo cometa PDF (1er coro)
Most of the times, you ve been said to be a bop musician. What do you think about this kind of apelatives or categorizations?
At this particular moment, it doesn’t seem to me that its something that describes what am doing. It’s something i’ve been through for a period of time (as lot of us had). Maybe it s a mental setting..it’s unavoidable to be marked by a style like be bop, but a different thing is that you do it right, as someone who is dedicated to the style. It seems to me as a very interesting school of music to have in mind, but I don’t think its as simple as that when it comes to that.
Its tricky no? Specially coming from someone that doesn’t neccesarily have the same tools as a musician. What kind of thing makes you feel more identified nowadays? Musically or extra musical…
I think i identiofy myself better with th Non Concept, haha.. Any sound in itself makes a lot more sense to me before putting it into any category after it sounds. Nowadays, there’s a huge amount of information that sometimes makes it even harder to clarify the boundaries. To explain something, specially when you are teaching, maybe the best is to show it with music, not neccesarily try to describe it with words.
So, the fact that there’s so much information, seems to you to act as a barrier when it comes to the time to discern between what’s important and what’s not?
Its eventually a problem of misinformation, because too much information is misinformation. But i get surprised sometimes..
A couple of days ago, we were talking about Tristano with a couple of students and one of them said that it was “love at first sight”. And we are talking about a music that is not so friendly in the sense that it has such a strong personality, such strength that it can have an imediate love or hate reaction. In that sense, the search for information can also help, but maybe the postmodern problem has to do with that: how to find your own folklore, the maternal-paternal that makes sense to you.
The question is if the human being now a days is capable of absorving all of this “available” information and don’t get crazy.
That’s what happens with the zapping culture: there’s an excess of information but at the same time, an incapacity to process it.
Can you refer to the workshops you were doing, which has to do with processing information from the jazz tradition and that is related to the music you have been playing, studying and processing..
This workshops are a two-brained initiative.
You are doing them with Claudio Rubio..
Yes, we been doing this for about half a year till now.
The idea of the workshops is to go deeper into the practice of musical activity, giving the space to listen with self criticism (positive and negative). To me, personally, the idea is to replicate a little bit of what i had in Club de Jazz, which basically was to gather together to play and in between the gigs that you have, there are lot of things happening in regards to auditioning, investigating at home..
In the 90 s you would play the same cassette for the whole week and lot of things would start to permeate into you. Basically, you would get a lot more familiar with the sound of any specific cassete you were listening to and think “how do i do to sound like Barney Kessel?? How do i sound like Herb Ellis? So..well the idea is to invite the guys to participate in this experiment that goeas a little against the rules or actual/tipical music schools. Its like trying to deliver a little of the street foundations”i got from the Club..
Its in some way a non academic approach that has to do with your own personal experience..
For me, the only way to accept a dogma is when you realize why there’s a rule. Its very hard to acknowledge something if you don’t live it your own, imposed as an alien experience i believe.. So if something is failing, you can see that right away and you have to react, otherwise, the rest of the group is going to demand it from you.
Please name some of your mentors/teachers
There were a couple..Spike Holmes, an english double bass player, with whom we got to be very close friends. We would go to his house and listen to some music..He trained me a lot and was able to read what I really liked. He took me to the side of blues and swing. He was/is a very generous and easy to talk guy. Also Pepe Córdova, José Hosiason, Giovanni Cultrera, Daniel Lencina and of course, Panchito Cabrera
All of them in my early stage.
Spike was a non-proffessional musician, and in regards to the “talleres” that is related to this,in the talleres the idea is to be able to put together all of the different loves around jazz. It doesn’t matter if its a hobby, or you are a professional. The good thing about this places like club de jazz is that they gather people from different backgrounds and different levels of playing that share this passion. And in the end, am coming from there. As a matter of fact, I didn’t name my father before, who has a lot to do with my background as a jazz musician and he is an aficionado..not dogmatic or academic..
I’ve seen you working on other musical projects more related with pop. How has your experience with Pedro Piedra been for example?
I am coming from the Beatles: jazz comes from my parents, my uncle..but The Beatles was a more personal choice. I mean that i found and treasured them myself. I think that if you like The Beatles, you have a love for music in general and all of the possibilities that pop generates.
For pop I think of music that takes from every other style and i believe its a very good trip for any jazz musician to listen to any kind of popular music that is not jazz. Good songs, solid production, good audio. I had a really good time with all of the Pedros: Pedro Aznar and Pedro Piedra.
I like the idea of composing a solo. The expected solo 3/4 the way of the song, which is exactly what the song asks for and nothing else. Its not a pretentious improvisation, but something that fits perfectly into the song. I mean from the guitar player’s perspective
And what about being on tour and having to play the same solo day after day, several days of the week.. how do you feel about that?
Fortunately, we were never that successful, haha. The truth is that I never got to the point of being tired. With Pedro Aznar it wasn’t like we were on tour for months playing every day. Also, the solos had space for improvisation and when we were on stage, we would still feel emotion as if it was the first time it was happening. And as i told you, I was never in a project of total success where we would be playing every night for a lot of people.
What do you think about the chilean music enviroment/industry… What could be done for it to be better?
I think I only know like 5% of it..I see some news or hear stuff from my colleagues, but that s not really getting to the bottom of it. My impression, from the distance , is that there is a little more industry. But the parameters are different. Its an industry with different timing, formats, another timing for the messages and I am analog, lo-fi and i like to improvise. In a few words, am pretty out of “the big industry”, so its hard for me to talk so generally. What I think is pretty tangible is that you can see new theaters. Theaters with technology, got sittings..
And the records sale it’s hard to keep up with, because its something that is changing and i think that for my area which is jazz, the good thing is that its music that doesn’t repeat itself in theory, so that keeps on being the added value of jazz. It keeps on being something that is happening live, being created in the moment. So i think positively about the future.
In what way do the musicians you play with affect your playing?
I think that any sonic surrounding, even the people speaking or the cars passing by when you are playing can affect your music. I try to play with inspiring musicians, with good taste, with the ability to develop.
Every musician has their own qualities and its been different for me every time I put something together.
Nowadays i am very lucky in my trio to play with Milton Russel that is a super bass player and Carlos Cortés who is a very energetic drummer.
I think there are great musicians in Chile and what am looking for is a good friendship, mutual respect and a development in regards to what we share.
Do you work mainly from written parts or you adhere more to the oral tradition?
Generally i prefer to communicate the songs orally. Sometimes i send a song and then teach the harmony to rest of the guys. If you are going to play together for a while, its probably better because you can take the parts from stage and lets you focus on the music. Lately i’ve been mainly playing in a much simple format which ios the trio, but when i work in more complex formats, maybe the parts become a little more necessary. Actually this is why am falling in love with jazz again, because everything is being generated by the improvisation..I don’t mean free but the conception that the form of the song and its harmony can create everything. Sometimes, the paper/charts can repress you. At least that is my philosophy.
Its the idea of going back to the roots, to what we can hear and what comes from the interplay..and finally a question that has to do with motivation. What do you do on those days when you don’t feel like grabbing the guitar or practicing. What things inspire you or motivate you on those moments?
You can cut this part..haha but i’ve never been too studious. Its like first you have to establish a goal and that system doesn’t work too much for me. But I like to work on the violin partitas from Bach for example. It puts all your technique in service of the music. And there are a lot of things to solve on the way. Its still very hard for me to study. There are a lot of things I would like to study but life takes its bite and we get consumed in productivity, responsibilities, affections..and we have to try to be intelligent. The message that I think can help is that its important to be opened to the stimulus, because if you get to have a moment in the day when you find a good paragraph in a book or a solo from a guy you haven’t heard before, they can be experiences that change your day.
To me thats fundamental now a days, specially because of the lack of time. That’s why everything lasts two minutes and to reach a certain level of emotion is hard. As Violeta Parra said..to go back to 17..
Actually i dont know how do the kids do . Maybe you can ask one of the in your blog 
Maybe its that we loose our capability of being impressed
Exactly, that’s why its so important to be open minded..if you are permeable to things, beautiful things can happen without the need of being too tedious. Its not necessary to go to university for 10 years to play good jazz.