Paul Hirsh
jazz panpipe pioneer and designerRecent Comments
Author Archives: jazzpanflute
How to be a Bomber (Perfect Love Casts Out Fear)
Across the road from me is an area where the old men play their pétanque, or as the English prefer to call it, boules. And most afternoons when there isn’t a game on, one particular fellow can be found there … Continue reading
Posted in Musicianship
Tagged David Garrett, ear training, Kreisler, Praeludium, violin mastery
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The Philosophy of Licks
What is a lick? A lick is a musical phrase. But not every musical phrase is a lick. To qualify as a lick, the phrase must stand out in some way. As far back as I can remember, licks were … Continue reading
Posted in Musicianship, Scale Practice
Tagged Alankar, Coltrane Licks, Cran, grace notes, Guitar licks, Laurent Fournier
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The Universal Scale Game
In my last post I mentioned Taffanel and Gaubert’s daily exercises. One of the most popular of these has been nicknamed the Scale Game. It might be more accurately named the Pentachord Game as it only covers 5 notes of … Continue reading
Posted in Moves notation, Scale Practice
Tagged Balboa, Daily exercises, Gaubert, Saxophone, Taffanel, wholetone panflute, Xenophon
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The Other Jazz Scale
Every now and again, you’re working on a piece and you hit a passage that keeps tripping you up and you don’t know why. When that happens, it’s a sign you are about to embark on some brain re-wiring. I … Continue reading
Posted in Music Theory, Scale Practice
Tagged Altamiro Carrilho, Bach, choro, jazz minor, jazz modes, jazz scales, Taffanel Gaubert, Wholetone scale
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Your Three Instruments
1st Instrument : your horn Learning to be a musician begins with mastering your instrument. An instrument is supposed to be that thing that you bang or blow out notes on. Your voice. Why is it even called an instrument? An … Continue reading
Musical education, the wasted years
I am sometimes asked: What is the best way to learn to read music? How can I learn to “read flyshit off a wall”? The best tip I can offer is to make sure it’s music that you really want … Continue reading
Posted in Music Education, Music Theory
Tagged conservatoire, music teaching, musical education, sight-reading, sight-singing, solfa, solfege
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You get back what you put in
One of the dangers of transcribing music, often encountered by ethnomusicologists, is that of forgetting that what you write down and the music itself are two different things. Or as I keep saying, the map is not the territory. I … Continue reading
Playing what you hear vs. the instrument playing YOU
If we break down our focus of “playing like singing in the shower” into its component parts, using our hard-earned Intervallic Awareness to help us find the notes, we would end up with some scheme such as: Imagine a melody … Continue reading
Posted in Musicianship
Tagged improvising, inner melody, jazz improv, Jean-Michel Pilc, Lee Konitz
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How to make modular bass panpipes for classroom, stage and studio
Most bass riffs you get called upon to play contain between three and five notes, so why not assemble just the tubes you need for each tune – in the order they come, to keep it simple and lightweight? I … Continue reading
Posted in Intuitive Instruments
Tagged bass panpipes, Emerald Forest, John Boorman, musical education, toyo
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Intervallic Awareness for Improvisers 