Jazz Guitar Trio Improv

This was some jazz guitar trio improv with my friends from earlier tonight. Everything we played was straight ahead jazz except this one piece, this one stood out. It has some more classical and rock influences on my guitar parts. 

https://soundcorset.com/r/YlFIOSV3nZ?fbclid=IwAR2wQfW53rEVL4hwi1DXkCfAdsKyX_MByS1G8fJUTfsyuGouxgUC4aZ9EVg

Featuring Orlando Figueroa on guitar, Jason Tomas on alto saxophone, and Feather Robley on drums.

verändert sich durch Sein und Zeit

Gute Abend, 

Things are changing so much and so rapidly it's almost as if time itself is a blur. In the blink of an eye, we are born, we grow, we live, and we die. 

Mortality and fate are intertwined, although the moderns have never been able to quite explain or understand it no matter how far they get in doing so. The Ancients had an easier way of trying to understand it, but they too failed in this fundamentally human question. 

I've lived in Los Angeles for ten years, have had a great life, made some friends, partied and chilled with a lot of people, became a better musician, and even became a part of these rock and roll after hours parties by playing Hendrix for drunkards and druggies. 

Life is good. But fundamentally I realize I'm right back where I started when I first got here. Trying to make it in Los Angeles through music, my own wits, and whatever talents I may have in any other areas. It's rough. It's rough for anybody out here. 

The pandemic made life for a lot of people much worse. Their children have become stay-at-home malcontents that can't handle working, or worse, they just do drugs and alcohol and have no hope of ever succeeding in life, let alone holding onto a job without switching every 2-4 years. 

There are new strains of corona out there and there's more of the threat of respiratory diseases for infants and young children. Politics have become embroiled and republicans are content to make fun of Pelosi's husband pretty much getting murdered. 

To be alive in the bitter sea. 

What's a guy to do?

Run the changes again. 

Play the same old song but in a different way. In order to live in this decline of western civilization, you must learn to find a new way to live. 

For everyone, this will mean something different. For me, I had to learn to stay away from problem people and their problems, and stay focused on my job, music, reading, eating better and losing weight, and maintaining, making, and improving relationships. None of it is easy. In fact, it' grueling and mind-numbing. 

For years and years I used to be content to sit in my room and play video games, not caring about anything going on outside my window. Then the pandemic kicked in and somehow I became more serious. I realized how fickle life can be. 

I started taking music more seriously, deeply trying to understand everything I read, rather than just reading for pleasure. I started learning languages like Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. I learned how to play jazz guitar so I could get out of my rock guitar virtuoso lizard brain. I started playing piano and drums and even singing. I even did a lot of open mics where I was playing electric guitar plugged into a PA, and singing along to my guitar. Scary! 

Today, I took the bus to guitar center and bought a pair of drum brushes, brushes, used to play more mellow soulful jazz patterns and ballads, even swing.

So there you go. Find your way to live. The meaning of life is that it is meant to be lived. 

You got this. 

[photo is ai generated, created with stable diffusion, android playing jazz saxophone] 

Live guitar jam! 7/7/2022!

Howdy, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU-1HPMk3SU&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

This is a livestream from yesterday. I was suppose to jam with my friend Jason Tomas, who plays saxophone, but there was some kind of mix up, so I ended up jamming half the set jazz improv, and the rest more rock and roll. Thanks, enjoy!

Peace and Love

Live performance 6/30/21

 Had a good jam session today with my friend. Check the video here.

Thank you very much for listening. Please share, listen, critque, feel free to comment, like, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Check out some of my other videos on there as well. 

guten Abend

Live performance 2/10

Live performance recorded today, 2/10/21. Featuring on alto saxophone Jason Thomas and myself, Orlando Figueroa on electric guitar. We perform some standards, blues, and improv.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_W3HRc0CI&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

Live Performance 2/3

Live performance on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, featuring Jason Thomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on guitar. We played some jazz standards and did some improv. Sound is okay, not great, but the performance was a good one. It's a blessing to be able to livestream, record, and play music during a worldwide pandemic. Thank you for listening and stay safe. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_DERvGXm4o

Live Performance 12/2/2020

This is a live performance from today, 12/2/2020, that took place from 430pm-530pm. Featuring myself, Orlando Miguel Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. We perform [in order], an untitled composition, Footprints, Freddie Freeloader, Blue Monk, a jam based on a diminished chord, and ending the set with Body and Soul. 

Watch the performance here, https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1730748607096466

Thanks for listening and supporting our music. 

The modern improviser refuses to die! 

Acoustic live performance

Here's an acoustic improvisational performance with a few riffs and melodies from standards. Thanks for listening and enjoy. Performed 11/22/2020 in the afternoon.

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1722193324618661

Meditative Improvisational Mind

Good evening, 

I've been practicing and playing music a lot more often lately. As I've started live streaming jazz standards and improv with my good friend Jason, I've been practicing, playing, and recording much more often. It's good to be inspired. For a few years way back in 2013 I stopped playing guitar. It's good to be back in the saddle again. Here I'd like to jot down more notes on what goes on in the mind of an improvising musician. Check my first post about it here. 

But in today's post I'm going to keep things simple and talk about how to really tap into that meditative improvisational frame of mind. 

So we all know what improvisation is. It's the ability to play something, something well, off the cuff, as if you never played it before. I practice improvising most often in the form of jazz guitar. How do you improvise? It's a tricky question as there are actually many different ways to improvise but the best way for me is to tap into a meditative state while you're playing. This means that all other thoughts in your mind are turned off and you go into the present moment. The only thing that you're attuned to is your very nature; your daesein [your worldhood of the world]. 

Essentially, this means everything pertaining to you: How are you feeling that day? How is your day going? Are you happy, sad, or have no emotional attachment to anything in particular at that current time while you're playing? Is your guitar tone how you want it? Is your band mate giving you the space you need to improvise well? Did you eat a good lunch or a lousy lunch? What's the temperature in the room that you're playing in? Did you wake up early or late? Are you tired? Energetic? What I'm getting at is that to you need to be truly attuned to yourself, your world, your daesein [beingness, beingness in the world]. 

So in order for me to attune myself to an improvisational frame of mind I have all these things in mind while I'm playing. Now here's where things get interesting. Your playing is influenced by all those things listed above but it doesn't have to be. The goal is to have everything in mind but turn it all off, not rely on your old favorite licks and tricks and chords and live in the spirit of the moment. 

The spirit of the moment. This is an interesting concept. While truly improvising in the moment you will never really time to think about the future. You will mostly focus on the present moment in time which is exactly what you want in order to improvise well. Like a true jazz musician. 

The means to getting there is deeply intense and spiritual. The hard way I've learned is through endless jamming on jazz standards, free form improvisation, deep meditation, and calming the mind [with camomile tea]. Eventually, you'll get there and you'll realize that you can truly improvise. You'll play things you've never played before and continue to do so the more you tap into the spirit of the moment and enter that meditative musical state. The hardest part of turning off and tuning in is that you have to let go of your thoughts and even yourself. It's an intense experience. You must let go of attachment and suffering. But it's also soothing. 

It's a lifelong practice. The jazz giants have mostly left us so it's up to us, the younger generation to keep jazz music alive. Hopefully, a newer generation like mine can do the tradition justice. Also, keep in mind that these ideas apply to other disciplines as well, not just jazz guitar. 

Blues Notes #1

Hello, 

I did another livestream today. We're going to make it a weekly performance. We'll continue to do standards and improv. Enjoy the music. Don't forget to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel. 

Thanks, enjoy 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ikzDWiTXHc 

Thoughts While Improvising

What goes in the mind of a musician while he or she is improvising? Hard question to tackle, but without further adieu, here's a post entitled Thoughts While Improvising. Keep in mind that these are taken from my point of view. For other musicians it might be a lot different. They could be thinking about cheeseburgers. 

First, I'm always thinking about the melody, the chords, and certain scales or motifs that work within that system. I always look at the song and keep the melody, chords, and scales in my mind's eye, so to speak, so that when I need to take a solo after my band mates, I don't have to focus on any of that stuff as much. Rather, it's ingrained in my head through repetition; of hearing the song a million times, hearing other people play the song, hearing my band play the song before, hearing my band mates play their solo and adjusting to it when I go, and hearing the familiar chord progression and melodies. The easy way of explaining it is that you have to study the song [the chords, the melodies, the rhythms, the comping, the lead work] before you can truly know the song, and then after you've done that, you can throw it away, and go to the next stage. 

Second, there are always those type of musicians who don't have to study songs to improvise well. Perhaps they're just natural good musicians and can improvise on a muddy boot some amazing rhythms. This is the part where if you know all the meat and potatoes of the song [the structure, the chords, the melodies], if you're comfortable enough and have enough practice, you can actually just throw all that stuff out the window, and, gasp[!], just play straight from the heart. This is more of a bluesy [and rock] feel rather than a straight ahead jazz approach [at least imo] but it gets the job done. This style of improvisation, when I play like this, I don't think about anything at all in particular, rather, my playing ebbs and flows through my inner feelings, my inner emotions. I believe that this is true jazz improvisation, but sometimes you have to study the song in order to get here [I prefer to study the songs]. 

Third, I think about the main theme of the song. What's the main melody? Remember to always keep that in mind even if you're going far over the moon in a modern straight ahead jazz guitar solo [think Mike Moreno, Lage Lund, Mary Halvorson]. If you keep playing the melody, add permutations to it, and add that as part of your solo, it gives your solo a lot of structure and weight. Sometimes I think about the melody, and come back to it, either at the end of the song repeating the head, or just ending the song in an interesting way, using the melody to form an unusual [b9, #11, 13th note chords] but great sounding chord[s] to end on. 

Lastly, improvisational music is a spiritual endeavor. One of the magical things about playing a form of music that is based on improvisation [jazz] is that when you improvise, there's no telling where you're going in your head. You're sitting on a chair but metaphysically speaking, you could be flying across the heavens. For me, it feels as if time itself has ceased to exist, and all my thoughts have ceased to exist, and I'm in some sort of black hole, blacked out from the rest of the world and others, even when people see me play on a stage [although I feel them and their feelings too], I feel this inward prescience, the cosmic energies that arise out of me and into the world, the world-hood of the world, a sort of being and time, daesein, if you will.

Improvisation brings me to a spiritual plane where nothing can hurt you, you're invincible, you can fuck up and make mistakes but it won't hinder you or hurt you in the long run, it forces you to adapt to any and new situations, teaches you how to play in an ensemble with others, how to comp [accompany, strum chords for the band] for other musicians, how to take solos, how to play melodies with confidence and ease. When you see that this is all part of the vast history of American jazz you can see how your playing has been influenced by history, and you can take solace in the fact that you are keeping the tradition alive through your music, however you choose to do it. There's really nothing quite like it. Even though I love rock and roll, there's something about jazz, about improvisational music, that can't be forgotten, that can't be broken, it's still untouched, perfected by time, and the great performers that played it. 

There's no right or wrong way to think while improvising. Most of the time I feel like I'm not thinking at all, rather that I'm feeling the music in a much more visceral way. Sometimes you get so used to just playing from the gut, that eventually everything you play comes from that same place, where you're playing more off your own feelings rather than the song or the song's structure. Whatever works is fine. Finding your muse is what takes a long time when it comes to improvisation. Find what works for you. One thing I didn't mention is that sometimes when you're doing improv, you have to think about what you're going to play ahead of the time. Things like that. Who knows, for some people, thinking about cheeseburgers might encourage them to play a lot better. For others, much less so.   

The Quarantine Recordings pt. 2

Hello, good people of the internet. Here's part two of a series I'm calling the quarantine recordings. We did a bunch of jazz standards today in my backyard, just jamming out. A lot of people stopped by in the front yard to listen. It was cool. The songs are in the order they were performed live. Check them out below. Thanks for listening!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/untitled-tune-qiuarantine
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/autumn-leaves-quarantine
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/airegin-quarantine
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/four-quarantine
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/all-the-things-you-are-quarantine-2
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/impressions-quarantine

Guitar/effects, Orlando Figueroa 
Alto Saxophone, Jason Thomas

On the Road

On the Road is a book by Jack Kerouac, published in 1957. About, well, being on the road. But really its much more than that. It's about the search for IT, whatever that may be; spiritual, musical, drugs, women, sex, drink, parties, friendship, solidarity, marriage, fame, fortune, success, traveling on the road looking for IT. Ultimately, they never find it, so it could be said that the story is about loss, not getting it, never finding it.

Kerouac was part of the beat generation of writers, or as he phrased it 'beatific', meaning blissful rather than the traditional beat, worn down and looking up the definition. The novel is a roman a clef, meaning real-life events with real people overlaid with a facade of fiction. It should be noted that the main characters in the novel are; Sal is Jack Kerouac himself, Old Bull Lee is William S. Burroughs, Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg, and Dean Moriarty is Neal Cassady, all-important, influential writers of the beat generation. What a cast. 

The writing of the book was taken from notes during a road trip in the 1940s. Later it was typed out in a continuous reel of paper for three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957. At the time of publication, the Nytimes hailed the book as a beautiful and most important utterance of the beats, with Kerouac being its chief avatar. But the reviews weren't all positive. One reviewer said the novel takes you on a long trip, ultimately leading to nowhere. The novel is generally regarded as one of those important English language novels. 

Kerouac was inspired to write the novel because of his friend and fellow beat writer Neal Cassady. Cassady wrote a 10,000-word letter, which prompted Kerouac to write "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose," a writing treatise on style that reflected a musical, jazz sensibility of improvisation with little rewriting and editing. 

The story is about a couple of carefree young friends who are somewhat literary that engage in road trips during a specific era of jazz history; the transition from Charlie Parker to Miles Davis, from early bop to straight-ahead jazz.

The influence of jazz music and blues is profound here. There are so many jazz musicians that are named here it's too many to recall in this short post. Being a jazz and blues musician myself, I see the utmost importance and care that Kerouac put into describing this specific era of time in America, and how important the music was to the people of his generation, to the beats. Some writers have said that On the Road contains some of the most important descriptions of jazz music ever. Interesting.

The jazz music also reflects the writing. The writing is done in a spontaneous prosaic. It's quite refreshing, considering that most of the novels I read are highly edited over and over again. Although the writing is sort of simple, because of the fact that it reads like a jazz song, it's very enjoyable to read as a musician. You can hear the swing beats in the writing, the sheets of sound if you will. But most importantly, it's fun. It isn't work to read this novel. It reads like a breeze, again, again, like sheets of sound of a tenor sax. Blowin', as they call it.

The characters of this story take pleasure in everything they do. Drinking, parties, women, sex, driving fast down the road, getting stranded with no money, doing stupid things. We aren't shocked by sex and drugs. They substitute family for male brotherhood and the ladder of success for freedom of the road, a new measure of male identity. It's about searching for something to hold on to; a larger truth which is never found. Some people may never find it. And our heroes in this book don't either. Broken dreams and failed plans. In retrospect, it could be seen as a gloomy, middle-aged disillusion. So in that regard, this book has completely lost the zeitgeist. The ethos of the book has been lost. Could it come back again?  Who knows.

Kerouac described his writing as Impressionist, art through observation. Not the traditional rewriting and editing process, rather, the emotional spontaneity of the writing itself. There's a personal nature of the text that makes it come alive, makes it more realistic, casual diction and relaxed syntax that depicts the energy and emotion of the experiences. 

All in all, I found this to be a good read. It's a good book for quarantine because you get a sense of fun and adventure even though we're all under lockdown because of COVID-19. I wouldn't want to have an adventure like the guys in this book for obvious reasons. Some of it is downright miserable, especially the parts being stranded in American cities with no cash and no car, hitchhiking. The zeitgeist for this kind of stuff is gone but it's still important for us to read and write about. The beats sure were some kind of generation. 

New Recordings 2020

Hello all. I just wanted to update my Soundcloud with some new recordings. Here are six new tracks from my jazz duo. We've been practicing together for about a year. I've definitely learned a lot about jazz and improvisation through the project. How to truly improvise, given on the time of day, your mood, your heartbeat, the lunar cycle, the sun's position in the sky, [lol, you get the idea].

Basically, it's been good mutual musical growth. Enjoy the tunes.

Orlando Figueroa, Guitar
Jason Thomas, Alto Saxophone 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/voice-0063
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/voice-0043
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/voice-0044
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/voice-0054
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/voice-0055

Equinox, in September

I had a good jam session today with the jazz duo. Here's my favorite recording from today's session, from September 17th. Trane's Equinox, with a lot of improv.
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/equinox

Orlando Figueroa, Guitar
Jason Thomas, Alto Saxophone 

Jazz Trio Recordings

Back with more straight-ahead jazz recordings. This is a new trio that just formed today actually. I've been working with Jason Thomas [alto saxophone] for about 2 months and now Scot Sommers [trumpet] has joined the group, resulting in an eclectic trio.

We're playing standards out of the real book for now but I plan on composing tunes so that we can start to have originals as well. I plan on having the group play some open mics at Petie's Place, located in Tarzana, CA.

This is the beginning of something. I actually wanted to get a bass player rather than another horn but this is a great playing situation. Scot's style reminds me of Freddie Hubbard in Dolph's Out to Lunch. He's actually not a free jazz guy at all, which surprised me. Jason's alto playing is stellar, he was a lot more relaxed once Scot's trumpet entered the mix. Before when we were playing as just a duo, we were playing a lot more conservatively, more reserved.

On my solos, you can see where I was on the very edge of my seat, about to lose control. Sometimes its good to see that spontaneity, especially in jazz music. A lot of what we played in terms of the free form improvisational jams [not the standards], it sounded like a lot of ECM stuff I've heard. A very white kind of sound, literally. [laughs]

Enjoy the music.

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/all-blues-jazz-trio
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/first-jam-jazz-trio
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/footprints
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/freddie-freeloader-jazz-trio
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/second-jam-jazz-trio
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/third-jam-jazz-trio