Meeting with Kenny

So I had a meeting with Kenny and he seemed interested in many of my ideas - he spent a lot of time thinking about the first idea, which I was surprised at.  It's been a long day so instead of making a new post I'm just going to copy and paste the document I used for notes in the meeting. Hopefully it won't effect my mark!

Will post later on in the week going over what he said.

J

Project: Jazz Harmony - reharmonization 

First idea: Study various different styles of keyboard based jazz (jimmy smith type organ, gospel organ, piano - bill evans, thelonius monk, esbjorn svensson, etc) (artist specific) and record a collection of hymns in the style of said artist.

Second idea:  Study the style of a particular artist - a deceased artist. Learn harmony, commonly used voicings, stylistic elements, key phrases, etc - using that knowledge, reharmonize tunes that were released after artist’s death.  Goal: Create a convincing recording that makes it sound like the artist himself is playing a song that he couldn’t possibly have played.  Would be played on pianos that are edited to sound very old/out of tune. 

To the average listener, difference between an existing track by artist and one of the new recorded tracks should be identifiable as the same person, even though it’s not.

Eg. Study Bill Evans in depth - cover songs written in this decade in his style.  

Cons:

 Can I feasibly learn someone’s techniques/style as well as required within a year?

 According to what little research I’ve done, the level of depth I’d be looking at is verging on masters/doctorate level.

Third idea: Study artists who have reharmonized music extensively - ie. dirty loops, etc...Work out their methods and style - what is it that makes the reharmonization of a chord sequence work? AIM: find any key traits or similarities.

Fourth idea: Study various artists styles.  Combine them together to create my own style.  Use this style to reharmonize various tunes - pop, hymns, etc...)

Fifth Idea: Gospel organ.  Hymns are reharmonized in beautifully colourful ways - would love to study this but gospel harmony would take me down a path different to what I’m currently on - jazz harmony.  Would be like starting from scratch - couldn’t really do gospel organ in depth with a single Nord, unless focusing purely on harmony.