2016 Paula Maya Video

Pic by Lisa Hause

My band has a new promotional video out. It is short, less than 3 min!

This short video features several clips from jazz festivals, a few pics, recordings off our new release 'Iluminar', and even a drum solo. All in less than 3 min, if you can believe it!

Please go here and check it out. I think you will be entertained, and will be helping great independent music and musicians in the process!

Thank you so much! Muitíssimo obrigada, ou, obrigadinha, como diria a minha vó Toni!

Newsom's Garden Party - Video & Pics

 Hi all. Wow, how lucky we were with our music series, the first Newsom's Garden Party, Brazilian Edition! The day started cloudy but early afternoon a beautiful sun came shinning through! Since that weekend it seems to me that we've had a lot of rain! Thank you all who made it to Brazilian Music in the Garden!

Here are some pics taken by Bill Newsom and Robert Wyatt. Also, here is a link to a video of Chega de Saudade (No More Blues) taken by our friend Magic Jack. It starts at the drum solo, with Joe McCreary on drums and Brad Houser on bass. Enjoy! We'll see you soon.

Dancing Around Their Queen

I don't know if any of you sees it this way. When I listen to baroque music and all the ornamentations that go along with it I imagine the tonic (the first note of a scale) or any of the 'more important' notes of that scale as a beautiful noble lady. And I envision the ornaments as her 'súditos', her subjects, dancing around her. All the trillos, mordants and cadences are dancing baroque steps, inevitably arriving at their Queen sitting on her throne.

Spring

Tulips of many colors: purple, yellow, red, orange and silver. The ground was like a giant colorful wave swaying in the wind. From the sky my wings melted and I dove right in. The petals were soft like satin and they smelled like fresh life. Slowly I hovered over the purple ones and sank in till my body kissed the Earth. And so I rested.

Throw It All Up In The Air

Throw it all up in the air and see how everything falls down.

It's very windy today. The doves are cooing, as usual. A staple sound of Austin. The birds sing and the siren screams. Saturday morning in the midst of SXSW. The colors outside are reserved. Green, gray and cream. The chimes tell us of tales not ever told. We daydream listening to its words of wisdom. Whispers from a past long ago.

Sim querido vento me conta as suas histórias e aventuras. Quantas folhas te passaram. Quantos pássaros te cantaram. Quantas árvores você já adormeceu, quantos galhos são sua família? O seu sino é cristalino, lá do céu, do Paraíso. Esse seu Paraíso que é realmente na Terra. Seu som, sua música eterna, sua vibração que nunca vai parar. O vento canta nas folhas, como se fosse o mar. Você pode imaginar um mundo sem esse som? Sem árvores, sem verde, apenas pedras e areia? Não. Não quero. Isso seria profundamente infeliz.

Harmony Tip 4

A great way to practice ear training is to use our voices and bodies to feel the sound vibrations.

Here is an exercise I learned from my friend and bass player Andy Zadrozny, who also teaches ear training. Play a note on a keyboard using a sound that can be held with the sustain pedal, but has no reverb, delay, etc... Make it a pure tone. Then sing each interval within the octave over that pure tone. You can sing 'oooos', or 'aaahhhs', or 'eeeees'.

For example. Let's say you choose to play the note 'A' just below the middle 'C'. Sing in unison with that sound. Perceive how it feels in your body. Then proceed to singing the minor 2nd, which is 'Bb'. Now listen how the vibrations that were completely harmonious before, now sound like they are fighting with each other. Go back and forth between singing in unison with that pure tone, and singing a minor 2nd above.

Repeat the same process singing all the intervals within the octave against the pure tone of 'A' (or any tone that is comfortable for your voice). In time you will recognize the vibrations of each interval, both in your listening and in the feeling in your body. You will find that some intervals like the perfect 5th and the octave are very harmonious, whereas the minor 2nd and flat 5th are not. You might have heard the term 'interval of the devil', affectionally given by the church to this most infamous interval: flat 5th, the tritone! :)

Try it, it's fun!

Harmony Tip 3

Harmony is so amazing. This word means a lot of things, as Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Grammy winning song ‘Ebony and Ivory’ sings about.

When I went to study with the great Luizinho Eça, I was already playing classical piano for about 10 years and was attending the Brazilian Federal University of Music, and The Brazilian Music Conservatory for music theory. On my first lesson I brought one of my compositions to play for him – at the time I hadn’t start singing yet, so it was an instrumental – and one of the chords in particular caught his attention. I think it was a 6 chord in one of its inversions. He asked me ‘ Why did you choose this chord here?’ To which I answered ‘I searched for the sound I heard in my head.’ Now, that caught his attention!

Eça’s method of teaching harmony was very unique, and at the core it was about finding the sounds we hear in our heads and/or trying different options until we find the particular chord with the particular bass that sounds like the emotion we are looking for for that particular melody.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn which chords belong to a particular key, and the relationship between them. That is a must. In fact, to use Eça’s method it helps to know by heart the most used types of chords in all keys. 

For example: I have a ‘G’ on the melody. That G belongs to many different chords. In the example below I identified 39 different basic chords that include ‘G’. I used the basic major and minor chords with 7th and 6th that ‘G’ appears. First as the Tonic, then the minor 3rd, then the major 3rd, the b5, the perfect 5th, the 6th, the 7th, the Maj7th.