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#OSCAR PETERSON CAKEWALK 1987 TOKYO HOW TO#
I played my heart out and to make a long story short, Oscar showed me how to voice my middle notes and move things around to make my style more harmonic. He said "Play Misty For Me" to which I replied "where have I heard that before" ? Oscar laughed and said, well you *do play piano don't you?* to which I laughed and said yea, I do and I want to learn from you.
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I got the feeling Oscar was on to me for some reason so I just blurted out "well sir, I really don't read charts too well" at which point the audience was snickering at me.
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So I walk up to the stage and sit behind this huge Steinway concert grand and look at the music figuring, I am totally screwed here. Totally not very good for me, or so I thought. Well, guess whose name Oscar called first? I was doing studio work on commercials and jingles etc at the time and had a basic knowledge of reading music. Still, I didn't run away because I figured as soon as a student played the tune, I could play it and since I know Misty and do have a basic knowledge of key signatures, time etc I could easily "fake it". So anyway, I didn't know this was how these master classes worked? I can't explain it, but I see the notes in my head and can just play them. I have no gift for classical although I love to listen. Other than a lead sheet, I never learned because I play completely by ear (since I was about 5 years old BTW) and I couldn't learn to read because once the teacher played the tune, I could play it back mostly note for note.Ĭlassical music excepted. There was one major problem for me, I don't read music. When I attended his master class, he handed out a chart of "Misty" and the idea was for each of the people in the class to come up and play the tune and Oscar would critique the student. He was very pleased! Besides his amazing musicianship which I am personally in awe of, OP was a way for me and my Dad to connect. OP was my Dad's favorite musician( my Dad played Jazz piano among other things.) I remember a few year back before my father passed away I noticed he didn't have many OP CD's even though he regularly talked about how great he was, so that Christmas I basically ordered half of the catalog Amazon had of Oscar Peterson and sent it to my Dad for Christmas.