I keep practicing the strange scale I learned, one of many Art Tatumisms. Then I try with my left hand but invert it so to use the symmetry of the hands, so that the same physical experience happens in opposite direction. In a sense balanced and even more dissonant, no harmonic centre to this though I listen for almost moments of knowing it physically or sonically. After I felt finished with early 80s music school at York, I looked for private study and learned of Darwyn Aitkin. He had a great reputation as a jazz piano teacher and only now, when I’m excited about Art Tatum ideas, do I remember Darwyn’s exercises, which is fortunate because they are exactly fine tuned solutions to Tatumesque problems, Darwyn called his method the hop. It was unimpressive to me then, but a smart surprise move now. His teacher’s teacher’s teacher was Liszt. That was the coolest part of knowing him but now I think it was the hop and the arpeggio exercise he said people heard Bill Evans practicing in sound check the last time he played Toronto. Tiny Gerrard street house with a large grand piano squished into the living room. Also liked the waiting room when I arrived and he wasn’t yet finished with another student, a small library stuffed with books, smokey from him. Sometimes you look at waves on the water, each one seems it’s own wave, it’s own life and each one dissolves like starting the etch-a-sketch over by a shake. For that moment it was so real, had a life of its own and its own relationships and histories but what isn’t noticed as much is the red plastic frame that was there before the drawing and still is after the shake up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"