Working with Jordan Rudess on his live online webcast, “Keyboard Wizardry,” was a blast. I was originally supposed to host the event, prodding Jordan occasionally and fielding questions from viewers who watched the event live. But Jordan pressed me into service to provide keyboard accompaniment for his musical excerpts and examples. Drawing from his solo work as well as material from Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment, these excerpts provided quite a challenge.
Fortunately, I was already familiar with Jordan and his work. In fact, I had first seen him give a keyboard clinic when I was 17 years old. More recently, my band Spiraling had shared the bill with the Rudess/Morgenstein Project at Calprog 2007, and at Moogfest 2008 in New York City. It was at these events that I witnessed the meticulous preparation and cool confidence that Jordan brings to his every musical endeavor — and you can see it clearly when you watch the webcast.
Jordan mapped out the various topics he wanted to cover in the clinic, with a musical example for each. Jordan provided me with transcriptions of the tunes done by Jordan Baker, along with MP3 clips, via email. The transcriptions were note-for-note accounts of the bass lines, with some select chord voicings spelled out and chord symbols listed when appropriate. Several of the tunes featured multiple meter changes, so hearing the audio while reviewing the transcriptions certainly made life easier. Fortuitously, I had already been spending a little time each day practicing Bach Inventions and Bartok’s Mikrokosmos. Having been doing that regularly, it made the job of reading these unconventional linear passages a smoother process. With only a few days to get it together, I also put the MP3s on my iPod and listened to them whenever I could. My practice plan was to give a little time for each tune, and return to practicing them later in the day. I’ve found that shorter, more frequent practice sessions yield better results than a big cram session would.
Interestingly, my speaking duties made me more nervous than the playing. It’s all about what you’re used to, and what you practice. I practice piano and keyboards. I don’t practice speaking on camera. But as with the playing, I just had to keep in mind what the point of the whole thing was, which was to get Jordan going. And he really got it going. He gives a lot of thought to everything he does in music, and it was a cool experience to have a courtside seat for the action.
Roland sponsored the event, prividing a new Fantom-G 88 for Jordan and a Fantom X6 for myself. Jordan’s keyboard tech Bert Baldwin was on hand, and was nice enough to set me up with a piano/bass split-layer hybrid suitable for accompaniment. As Murphy’s Law would have it, the X6 I was playing decided to randomly transpose one of the tones in my layer by a half-step — in the middle of a particularly tricky excerpt. You can watch me react to it by paging back in the LCD to the original patch, while keeping the groove going! Ah, the joys of playing live, on-camera. I had a great time being part of this. Jordan is a real act, and I was happy to jam alongside while he laid it down.
Check out Jordan Rudess’ online video master class, “Keyboard Wizardry,” with Tom Brislin hosting and accompanying, at www.visualwebcaster.com/musicplayernetwork/storefront.