EP10 - The Man Behind the Music! Steve Giordano Sr.

31:02And it's just so interesting to think about. Yeah. When a friend of mine, you know, he passed, Joe Mullen, a great drummer. Yeah. He was on a lot of my recordings when he knew that he was going to be dying. You know, I recommended that he watch some of these. Then it wasn't Sagan. It was more like Tyson Degrassi. And just to get a better perspective of how we're all connected and how we are, it's a process of not that you're going to be happy to pass, but it just gives you a broader view of things. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think I've always been inspired by that vastness.

31:49And it's just, you know, mind-boggling. Yeah, and there is the picture behind you. Did you put that up for this podcast and that whole spiel there? Well, I actually have a – it was$100. I have a planetarium that when my symbiosis project that you know what that is. It's not jazz. that we just play atmosphere music. Somebody might say it's space music, but it has a lot of elements. You know what it is. I'm preaching to the choir. It's in some of your videos. We came down the lights, and I put these stars on, and it just creates an atmosphere. Atmosphere means a lot. I always wondered that, actually.

32:33Does atmosphere give you that inspiration for the music that comes out? Is it? Yeah. Absolutely. And of course, yeah, it's sort of like a meditative way of looking at it. Like sometimes we just, I might sit at the piano and we just sort of not do anything for a couple of minutes and nobody's waiting for any kind of plan. Like we used to make titles in the early symbiosis, but we decided better not to even do that because we were getting too literal. We don't want to do that. So, and then we just start, but I do want to say this before this slips my mind, that I got a residency once. I got a grant to do schools, and it was supposed to be, you know, introducing music.

33:24But one of the things I wanted to do is I wanted to lower grades to when they see a film is to take a notice to the music behind it. So I created this little skit called The Wrong Music. And I had one kid sit, like, be a secretary. One of the girls and one of the guys, one of the kids be a monster. You know, they liked that. And I'm going like... Instead of being scary, I just, you know, everything's wrong, you know. And I did like a romantic thing and I would go... You know, just so they know the music means so much to how we feel. Yeah. And I often say that, you know, you might have a group of people go to, like when we saw Closing Counters, right?

34:15When you saw the aliens at the end, John Williams' score was so beautiful that you wanted to pick him up and kiss him. I mean, if it had been like monster music, they would be ugly. Yeah, sure. It's funny that you bring that up. Music scoring of any type of film is so important. And it's something that you don't really think about. Remember back in the 90s, movie soundtracks were a big thing. And they would promote the sound. Oh, this Aerosmith is on the soundtrack. And then it becomes the main theme song to the picture. I think it's bigger than that. Because anything you watch is going to have some sort of score behind it.

35:00And it's kind of – it becomes subconscious. Like the music behind a film is what kind of tells your brain – it leads your brain in a direction, right? Yeah. And it's wild. Like that's kind of what I've started doing more with Cockpit Casual. That's what I intended to do from the beginning. We'll talk about that in a minute because there was some limit. to how I did it. But, I mean, just, you know, you watch a horror movie, there are sounds that you can hear, if not music, just sounds, right? Sound effects. Sound effects. It affects your brain. Totally. And it almost tells a story itself without dialogue.

35:46And it's just such a critical piece. So when there's a film with a really well-done score, it makes the film, in my opinion. Yeah. Well, let's talk about cockpit casual in that sense. So the time I was in the studio watching you guys play and record some of the tracks for cockpit casual, I saw that you guys had aviation-esque videos on. That was an experiment. Oh, was it? So that's not the norm? Not normal, but still, it's all good. I mean, actually, quite frankly, I like it more like, because when I'm concentrating on music, I'm not actually looking at scenery at the time. Right. But I noticed the oldest trick in the book, and I took a couple of symbiosis pieces once, and I put graphics to them, like after the fact.

36:45And technically, the graphics have nothing to do with the music, but our brains. When you look at a film and then you hear the music, your brain makes it all – it's almost like the composition was made for the graphics and we didn't even know about the graphics at the time. It's just like an interesting thing. It really is. You hook it up. It's not like we're doing rhythm or the bass goes – besides just a color. It's not that. Yeah. So in those situations, you know, relating everything to aviation, you know, a lot – Of course. A lot, you know, of how the flight goes has a lot to do with the person that you're with, how you're vibing and all of that.

37:30So everything that you're talking about here, does who you're doing that music with, like how big of a thing is that? That's a great question, Bob. You know, ironically, you know, all through my years of playing, and it was, you know, I love jazz and play jazz, you know, but some of the stuff can't even be called jazz because people don't really know what jazz really is in a sense. But to your question, there are only a handful of players, and they might be great players, but there's only a handful that really have the egoless or selfish-less personality to put the music and that can play free improvisation in a so sensitive a way that if I would do like, if I would do something like, not like that.

38:34If I would create a texture, somebody would play something that, if they're listening and they would play something that would accommodate that. And what that does for me, that gives me something that I wouldn't have thought of if that wouldn't happen. It's not playing by myself. So when you have three people, that's why it's called symbiosis, like it's symbiotic. Yes. When you have three people that are in that mentality, we don't know how long they're going to be. We don't know how they're going to end. There's definitely transitions where they might modulate to other tonalities. Sometimes I'm so lost.

39:12I'm not even a piano player. I'm a guitarist. When I'm on a piano, I'm just using my ear and playing textures. I'm not going to turn on my theory because I know theory. I've got to analyze it, but I'm not even turning that brain on. I'm just saying this should be here. It's an interesting thing that you mentioned because it does matter greatly of who the musicians are and the attitude and the vibe about it. So with that said, do you have to have years of playing with those individuals? Is that where it comes from? Not necessarily. you have to have ears that, and this is my axiom through my teaching, because there's so much taught in the schools about theory and how to, and play this scale over this and do this over that.

40:01It's never, even since I was a kid, the music wouldn't exist without the ear. So if you're a great player and you already have developed and you can play what you hear, that's the axiom, Play what you hear, not what you're thinking, not what musical theory is telling you to do. Play what you hear. Somebody's playing a certain sound.

40:24Be able to contribute in some way. Yeah. You know, just listen to it and be able to contribute. Then you'll find yourself in the world. So it's not about playing with each other. It's about respecting each other as musicians. Right. And that we're all in the same boat. Like we're all in the same boat. When I did these master classes at some of the universities, instead of me going, yes, I'm going to tell you about how to play music and all this stuff, I said, we're all in the same boat. You know, we're all really together. Every struggle that you have, I have. It's always going to be that way with art.

41:04Right. That's what art is. It's art is imperfection. That's what makes it perfect. Yeah. That's why AI can never replace art. Let's not go there. It's a whole can of worms, isn't it? You got it. A whole can of worms. Well, something else that is interesting to me that I've always been curious about, especially in the improvisational world, in jazz, you have these great musicians, and you're talking about the ear is so important in playing the ear and your emotions. But how much of the discipline actually comes in and the understanding of music theory comes into that as an underlying fundamental to it all?

41:54Another great question. And it's in the background. In other words, if someone doesn't know theory and is just as very talented and can play, that's all great. And they could play great music. And they can play great notes and all that. And you say, fine. But when you know also at the same time what you're doing, you have a labeling system of saying, oh, okay, well, this is interesting. And how come I can use this here? And you start making connections harmonically. So like if I play this chord like this, that's just not one thing. That's a whole lot of things depending on the context. So theory kind of opens it up, Opens you up for experimentation.

42:40And what experimentation does, it increases your musical vocabulary, your vocabulary of what's under the hood. Yeah, that makes total sense. So that's where theory is. Theory turns the lights on to what you're doing. But you should never think about theory as little as possible when you're playing or scales or any of that because – It becomes second nature, right? It needs to become second nature. And it's really easy to say but hard. Well, it relates to flying in a lot of ways because, you know, the thing – something that we deal with all the time is like we bounce around from airplane to airplane, right?

43:17And we operate in very different environments all the time. And we also operate with crew members who had different training, who worked for different companies, who have different policies and different procedures and all that stuff. One of the reasons that you have to be quite experienced to excel and be good at the type of flying that we do is because we've taken and committed all the equivalent to music theory, the nuts and bolts. Right. You know, how do you – is this the kind of airplane that's so long that we're going to need to do a two-stage rotation off the runway? A lot of that stuff becomes second nature to us.

43:53The operating of the jet has to become second nature so that we can focus on the operational difficulties, you know, that we encounter along the way because it's a very nonstandard environment that we operate in. So in a lot of ways, that's very similar to symbiosis. How about this? Yeah. I have to interrupt you. Your goal is survival. My goal is something musical. Right. Still, we have these goals. Yeah, it's a means to an end. It's like, hey, check me out. Look how I can play. It's not looking like five – you guys want to survive and that's the main thing, right? Well, it's not really. I mean honestly, I'm not thinking about survival and staying alive.

44:37I'm thinking about like completing a mission, honestly. OK. I'm not even thinking about the – What could go wrong? Staying alive. Because that stuff – I'm thinking about that. Well, that's the stuff that becomes second nature. Like we we've had, you know, the survival skills beat into us from the time we started flying as teenagers. Right. Like the how do you react in an engine failure? How do you know how do you do you look both ways and clear verbally with the guy before you cross a taxiway or intersection? I don't think about it. My son is about to get his driver's license, my youngest, Ryan.

45:14And we're you know, he's also happens to be working on his private pilot's license. and when I'm teaching him the drive and we're driving back from the train, you know, when he comes home from school, you know, we hit an intersection. I'm like, clear right. And he's like, clear left. And we don't even think about it. It's just, it's already ingrained in his mind. It's second nature already. Exactly. It's second nature. Yeah. That's interesting. So back to, just real quick. So I wasn't going to do this, but I'm going to do this because I think people are going to want to see it and I want to show you this.

45:46And this is a good example of scoring and all this stuff. So I'm working on a cockpit casual and I think I bring it up every week. I'm working on one. It's going to be a great one. And I have, I actually queued it up. The screen is going to look like, like no joke, the screen is going to look like my Premiere window because I didn't render it. We're going to run right off of the preview screen of Premiere. So people can disregard, you can see the nuts and bolts of how this gets put together. But there's a scene that transitions to a symbiosis track. I'm not going to play the whole thing because it's going to be a surprise when it comes out in June, but I'm going to play a little bit of it.

46:21And it's a scene that we recorded this track earlier this year. We went and I, at the time, this, this production that I'm working on right now, wasn't even in my head yet. I didn't even know what the next project was going to be. So instead of, instead of bringing videos and ideas, uh, to try to change, set the mood for a track, what I wanted to do is I wanted to give the group, I wanted to give the band a sense of where I could potentially be using a variety of these tracks. And if you remember, Dad, I said, you know, one of the things that I'm going to be making is a flight across the Pacific.

47:00And I played some Pacific Islander music that had like some bottles and like interesting like percussion and stuff going on. And then you guys did a track that, that utilized that. And then, so we, we actually purpose built a few of these tracks that I've been using. And one of them, I knew that I had this great footage of the Aurora Borealis as we overflew Northern Canada, which is beautiful. And I kind of had an idea of what I wanted it to sound like. And I don't even know if this track is the one that you guys did for that. It may be, it may not be. I'm not sure. It worked out perfectly. But part of my process is I have to get intimately familiar with all the tracks that I want to use.

47:46And so I could recall where I'm going to go back and use it. And I immediately knew when I started editing as part of the video that this was the tune for this. So I'm going to play it. I'm going to play it real quick, just so you can kind of see it. And it kind of explains how the scoring elements are so important in how, you know, in what the takeaway is for the viewer. So you're going to see my screen right here. I know it's very small. All right. We're transitioning out of a country tune, which you'll have to see. It was autumn, so we expected it, but that didn't make it any less spectacular.

48:25The Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights. It isn't really a thing so much, not a gas or a vapor or something tangible. It's a process. We're bearing witness to oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the Earth's upper atmosphere interacting with electrically charged solar particles. Those particles have traveled 93 million miles from the sun in the form of solar wind, moving at over a million miles an hour. The journey takes several days and ends as they collide with our atmosphere, producing bands of light that we see dancing across the sky. Green and red, oxygen. Blue and purple, nitrogen. At first glance, the aurora looks stationary, but if you really focus on it, you can see the movement, like water vapor rising in a towering cumulus.

49:11But speed it up in time-lapse, and wow, just wow, our planet is amazing.

49:39All right, that's all you get. I remember that piece because I listened to, of course, I would listen to the recording. Yeah. I remember that, though. I remember that piece a lot. I don't remember the name of it. I use about four or five minutes of that piece as we're crossing the North Atlantic. So there's more to it, but I want it to be a surprise. No, there's a lot more to it. A lot more to it. I know the music part, but I enjoyed the variety. That's another thing about the symbiosis. And like a lot of musicians, you know, I wrote an article about this. Like a lot of musicians, artists, musicians, not making a living necessarily, but just artists, the art of it, is they strive for newness all the time.

50:27Right. So sometimes to a point of forcing things or just things to be different, you know, just doing crazy stuff just for the sake of originality. And that can be like not in a great direction. It's better to try to don't run away from who you are. Just trust that you will evolve on your own. And that is a heavy concept when you think about it. I actually wrote about that, especially for jazz players. You know, they don't want to repeat themselves. But if you heard Herbie Hancock on piano and you hear Oscar Peterson or McCoy Tyner or Bill Evans, you would know who they are. Why? Because it's their voice.

51:11They're playing the same instrument. So you don't run away from who you are. If you run away from who you are, you relinquish all you've worked up to to be. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah. It makes total sense. It makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. And I can tell you that it applies to so many things. So many. Of course. You know, that all the time I always say, no, I'm not going to do that. This is who I am. This is what I'm going to do. And absolutely. And to that same point, Dad, as far as getting that newness, that newness doesn't just naturally occur, though, I think.

51:52Maybe it does in some cases, but you have to push the envelope and it doesn't always work. No, it doesn't always work. You can't be afraid of that or let that hold you back. I mean, even like equating it to new theories or new ideas, if we were a bunch of scientists, you know, I mean, you know, where does newness come from? How do you come up with a new thought, new idea? But I think you got to be in the right frame of mind for it. You can't force it. So how do you do that? How do you evolve and continue that process? By being open to listening to things and having it hit me that this is something, and that's the whole desire of playing jazz, not on autopilot.

52:32Even if we're playing jazz, now the difference between jazz and symbiosis, the difference is improvisation with symbiosis is totally free. Jazz improv is improvising over something that's already a structure, harmonic structure and time structure. So even within that world, though, things can get open and loose and you can get into habits. And you shouldn't run away from your habits to the point where you go crazy. Just go with who you are and things will happen. Somebody could do something, especially if you're interactive. Somebody will do something that will spark a new idea or a note that you use in a different way that you never used in that way.

53:13And you just hear. It's just, you know what I mean? It's like I tell my students, you're never going to get to the end, so you might as well enjoy the ride. Because they're all like – a lot of them are miserable because they want to get – there's no end. No, there's no end. The journey is the destination. Very much so. Yeah. So jazz. This is a – I think that jazz is labeled. I don't necessarily think that there should be a label for jazz because I don't agree that symbiosis isn't jazz. I mean, yes, of course, you know, symbiosis tracks, you know, you're not going to go find one of these tracks in the in the in the real book.

53:56But there are elements of jazz in there. There are elements that we might hit on the groove and we might be improvising as if we're playing a tune. Right. Go ahead. Sorry. Whenever I put out A Cockpit Casual, you know, the comments are great. Thousands of comments and a lot of great stuff about the music. And there's also sometimes sometimes there's negative stuff about the music, which I also appreciate because that means that it's doing its job. The music is supposed to be front and center in my productions. I want it to be. I want I want it to to elicit a reaction. I want it to be positive.

54:28I try to make it positive, but it might not because everybody perceives music differently and has different tastes and also has different levels of of of maturity in their ears. Right. Like, yeah, yeah. Being able to appreciate complex music takes practice. It's hard. You know, as a child, I didn't appreciate classical music. It was always on. Me neither. You know, and then once I once I started listening to it more, I started. It's like a language. You go from thinking, well, this is this is boring. It all sounds the same until you really start understanding what you're hearing. and then all of a sudden it becomes intriguing and you want to hear more and you want to push your personal boundaries it doesn't just apply to jazz like i like i was telling you earlier when radiohead releases a new album the first 10 listens i i don't get it i'm like i don't they they screwed it up this time and sure enough by listen number 12 i'm like this is the best this is the best thing that tom york's ever done you know it takes time to understand the language Well, it's a quick fix world here.

55:38It's quick fix. And that's why that pop will always be pop and it's necessary and people need to instantly have gratification over lyrics, you know, or get away from whatever it is and jump in. But with the music we're talking about, it has to be cultivated a little bit. You know, you have to have somebody introduce you. I always often have created this scenario. Like if a person walks into a club, a nightclub, and everybody's talking and there's a jazz group up there and everybody's talking and they're not familiar with what's going on, they'll start talking as well. Now, if they go into the same place and everybody is like mesmerized, they're going to think, whoa, there's something going on here.

56:24They're going to take that time to sit down and listen. So what's the bottom line? Let's hire actors. Let's hire actors to sit in the front. Or serve peanut butter. Jam up their mouths. like we used to do to our dog when we were kids me and my brother oh my god

56:54so all right so sorry no no this is great i i think um you know i want people to cultivate an understanding and just to push outside of the boundaries i'm an appreciator of all music Like I really – people say that, but I legit am. I mean you go through my playlist on my iPhone and you will find things that are very unexpected. That's true. Yeah. I mean – All the stuff that I've listened to from you that we – that you share with me is totally unexpected sometimes. Bob is getting an education in music. Yeah, and Bob is very musical too. like maybe not as much as a player but as an appreciator bob does appreciate a wide variety of music he has a very i will say for a guy from kentucky bob has a very open mind seriously all bluegrass no i love bluegrass jazz man that's why i brought that up actually It's all good, man.

58:02It's all good. Bluegrass, I go through bluegrass phases. And that's also why it's so hard for me to say, to eliminate something and say, I don't like that. Yeah, yeah. It's hard. Now, I will say, as a kid, we weren't allowed to like other stuff.

58:21All right. Sorry about that. I'm just trying to give you guys, you know, open your ears up. It worked. It worked. Now we start the family therapy session. Family therapy session. After dinner, I would take my girls when they were little and we would just listen to music, you know. I mean, why not? I mean, here's the thing, though. Here's another thing that we haven't mentioned is exposure. Yeah. If people had better exposure to art in general, all art, I think there would be a better appreciation. I mean, when I played in Europe, when I did a tour with John Blake, the violinist, we just guitar duo, guitar violin.

59:00We'd play a club and you can hear a pin drop in there. Yeah. It was so quiet here, we wouldn't even bother. I mean, it's just people just, it's just a different kind of culture. And, you know, everything's about money and what's going to sell. I mean, if you're, you know, what's going to be the fastest trend, you know, whatever. I'm not saying anything's bad music, but when you hear things a lot, you start singing it. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, was there ever a time that you thought maybe, well, maybe I'll just go mainstream? Maybe? Yeah, you, like to make more money or whatever. People told me that.

59:45People told me that through the years. I would say, are you kidding? Why would I want to be miserable? You know, I mean, it's painful for me to, I mean, times I played like a couple of weddings just because somebody, doing somebody a favor. It was like I'm looking at the clock and it's quarter to nine and then an hour later it's ten of, you know, it's like. So with jazz in particular, like when did that start? Was there a transition? Like there was always. Six years old. It was just always. I just heard this music. Was it Coltrane? We had jazz stations in Philly. Coltrane, definitely. Heard this music and somehow, of course, I didn't know anything about music.

1:00:31I couldn't even play jazz for a long time. But something about it that everything sounded right. It had soul and it sounded right and it was intriguing to me. I didn't have to understand or feel where one is necessarily or know the forms of the tune. It just grabbed me, you know, and I'm so lucky. I feel blessed in my life to be able to get the support, you know, encouragement. My mother never said, hey, there's no money in that. You know, don't play that. Luckily, I grew up with my mother that let me play and encourage me, you know, and that was important. You know, if I had grown up on my father's side, they were divorced.

1:01:13Who knows what I would have turned out to be? Who knows, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lucky. I'm very, very lucky in my life. And I would never make any chance. I had a chance to go with Grover Washington. You know, he died. He's a wonderful person. And I would play some jazz gigs with him. But, you know, he's doing Mr. Magic. And his business lawyer, Lloyd Remick, liked me. And he said, you know, you're talented. He says, look at Grover's, in a nutshell, look at these gold records of Grover. All you got to do is, you know, just compromise, you know, do sellable things. I mean, look, they all did it.

1:01:52Look at Wes. They got to Wes playing Wendy, you know.

1:02:01Poor Wes. Wes is such a beautiful, Wes Montgomery I'm speaking of, such a beautiful, creative musician, starving. They got to him. George Benson, he's a vocalist now. One of my favorite guitarists, George Benson. Great guitarist. He became a star. Look at Herbie. Bob Miesi and I went to see Herbie Hancock in Philly. He had a record scratcher in there. Really? I mean, Herbie's a genius in music. He is. I heard him and Chick Corea, two of my favorite composers at the time. Yeah? What are they doing?

1:02:39They're playing like watermelon, man, and they're going like, you know, the power to, you know, I'm just like, I got to get out of here, man. It's just depressing. I will say that era of Herbie, though, brought us actual proof. And I that.

1:02:57What an ingenious piece. Unbelievable. That thing still blows my mind. I know every note in my head. Like, I can hear it. Yeah. So good. That whole sound of that band, Bernie Moppin, was it Bernie Moppin? Yeah. Sax solo? Was that Thrust? Yeah, and that Weather Report, too. Was that Thrust, was that album? Thrust, I think. Thrust, yeah. And then Weather Report. Oh, yeah. Another genius, Joe Zawano. Oh, yeah. I love Weather Report. Playing music that was sort of sellable. I mean, one of my favorite pieces is Unknown Soldier. Yeah. I don't know if you had that. It's when I sing The Body Electric.

1:03:36And that piece is so heavy. And Wayne Shorter is in that. Wayne Shorter does blips and blops, but the concepts are so beautiful. Yeah. So beautiful. So there, you know, what, you don't have to play Wendy, Wendy. Yeah. I have to play Mr. Magic and all that stuff. Of course, I don't know how many records they saw compared to Wendy. I mean, Weather Report still. I mean, I still listen to Weather Report. I still listen to Jocko. So it's I mean, it's funny because it's dated a little bit, but like it's dated in a good I mean, it's dated the way Billy Joel and like Johnny Cash are dated. Like it still stands up, you know, it still stands on its own.

1:04:21I mean, you never know what kind of opportunities are going to are going to come up in your life. So I just I have to share this. Steve knows about it. Oh, yeah. This is a couple of you're going to talk about the story. I'm not going to mention names, but a couple months ago, I got an email saying that this famous rapper wants to use an excerpt of a composition that I did in 79. I recorded it on Muse Records. And it's basically using six notes.

1:04:57It's really kind of haunting. Yeah. I'm going to be famous. I'm not really associated with him you're already famous you're aviation famous but the thing is who would ever think that in 1979 that now I'm going to be on a so in my neighborhood I live in Germantown I'm going to hear some dude playing that tune and I'm going to say that's my tune shut up what you idiot he's never going to believe me I have the vinyl I have that album still over. In fact, is one for Stevie on that one? No, no. That wasn't composed yet. I wrote that in Europe. Okay.

1:05:46That's a really catchy tune. I love that tune. I make all my students play it. That's the good ones. It's not that easy. It was that era, though. That was the era. I was in Europe. I was thinking about my son home, and I just wanted to write a tune. That was one of the tunes I started with just the melody. I had no idea what the harmonic structure was going to be. And I put the harmonies later, you know. I get inspired like that. You know, I wrote the Vellana Anna in Italy, you know, this piece. I was singing in a building that was called Vellana Anna, and I just wrote this really beautiful piece there, you know.

1:06:24But, you know, I have to confess, the past couple of years I've been through some health stuff. I haven't composed. And I just start working with another vocalist. I'm hoping that I'll get some inspiration to start writing. Because I haven't written. I'm jealous of my own music. I listen to some of these pieces I wrote. I'm thinking, man, I'm actually jealous. It's horrible to say that. But I haven't written in so long. I want to get back to writing, you know. So but seeing – having this opportunity that our worlds collide in a beautiful way. And then also Terry, I told him I'd give him a little plug.

1:07:06Yeah. I don't know if Bob knows about this. There's a helicopter guy. I can't pronounce his last name. His name is Terry. He's from the Netherlands. And it's Helicopter Aviation – uh-oh. I'll put it in the show notes I told him I'd give him a play and I can't remember the stupid title of the name I'll find it he's making me a bowl he made me a bowl like a wooden bowl just so I send him music he's not like Stevie's show because he just shows footage there's no talking he's like mixing with the culture you guys are introducing cultures his thing is just scenery so he's got some of my music in the scenery.

1:07:51So he was appreciative. So he sent me a wooden bowl and I said, I'm joking, I said, you want to make me a guitar? I think I put it in the set. He might be making me a guitar. No, no. I'm only kidding, Terry. I'm only kidding, Terry. No pressure. Terry's website is Nordic Helicopters Aviators. Nordic Helicopters Aviators. So it was an interesting thing. He reached out to me early on, like when we first started cockpit casual and he's like i really like your dad's music would it be okay if if i use some of his tracks you know i create youtube videos um and it's really scenery it's like helicopter shot scenery of like the fjords and the glaciers and all that and i'm like i'll one-up you i'll give you my dad's email he'll give you he'll give you the library man i give him i give him stuff he's He has a daughter that's young, 11, 12, 13, something like that.

1:08:50But she likes the music too. Yeah. I'll tell you, man, the culture overseas, I don't know. Yeah, I'd like to live there, I think. But, you know, it's different. We are who we are. I live in Philadelphia, Germantown, you know. But it's okay. We deal with it, you know. We toughen up. Well, I mean, the jazz scene in Europe is great. Actually, the jazz scene in Southeast Asia has become really good. There was a jazz group at a hotel. First of all, I mean, the Philippines has fabulous musicians. Thailand. I mean, and jazz is pretty big. I was at a hotel with Chris Heber years ago in Bangkok, and there was a band playing jazz standards.

1:09:36And I'm like, oh, this is cool. We were listening, and they were really good. Were they Asian or were they Indianapolis? Yeah, yeah, they were Asian. They were all Thai. Wow. And or Malaysian or something. And, you know, I was like, man, these guys are really good. So we were eating dinner. And then toward the end of the set, they stopped playing standards and they just played. They just like improvised up on stage. And I was like, man, these guys are legit good. Like they were legit good. Do you remember the instrumentation? It was like a real standard. So it was like drums, piano. There was a saxophone.

1:10:12A bass though, right? A bass. Yeah. An upright bass. Yeah. It was like your standard, like quartet, quintet. Yeah. Wow. Saxophone was like the brass, you know, woodwind brass instruments. Nice. It's a lifetime of work. I don't even like to use the word – you can understand this now. I don't like to use the word jazz. I mean you hear my compositions. They're not jazz. Yeah. I write waltzes, you know, just beautiful impression. I got an interview one time on WRTI, and it was one of these jazz buffs. He said, Steve, who are your influences? He expected me to say, you know, which are true, you know, Pat Martino, all guitar players, Pat, you know, Martino and Wes Montgomery and all these people.

1:10:55You knew Pat, right? Oh, yeah, I knew Pat a lot. But he – so I said, Debussy, Ravel. I started naming these impressionistic composers, you know, and then I mentioned some of the jazz guys. He was like, you couldn't believe I said that, you know. It was just like, that's the truth. You know, some of the Brazilian people, you know, when I first heard the Brazilian music, the Sambas, I just loved that. That's why I started playing in the beginning, that. It's such a beautiful feel. And the bass is only going to be like, it's like halftime. It's like, even though it's going to be written like one, two, three, four, it's going to be.

1:11:38Try to get my students to tap their foot like this. Yeah. Yeah. But they can learn how to. I said, we're all drummers. You got to get the coordination. Yeah. The rhythm is all of it. I mean, that's what defines it, right? That's what defines it. There's a, so there's an early cockpit casual. It might have been the second or third one I did. It was with Ava. And we went to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and we played golf. and we picked up a freighter up in Kelowna, Canada. We flew it down to Belo Horizonte. And I have a lot of your Brazilian jazz in it. It's on YouTube now. I mean, you can go check it out.

1:12:12It's called Sitting, Waiting, Golfing. Okay. Yeah. And I will warn you, I mean, if you're used to watching like the more recent ones, it's kind of clunky. I mean, like the sound levels are the best. You don't want to care about that when I hear the music? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, the music is great. The music is front and center. It's like you can't hear my voice under it. the video off. I don't like it.

1:12:35No doubt. You guys have been working together. How long now? 25 years. I really enjoyed the... I never said this to you, but I really enjoyed your rapport with each other. It really reflects the dedication that you guys have and how you get along with things. It's just a beautiful thing to see the way you're doing this and the way you're introducing, in such a beautiful way, cultures. I mean, of course, your mom's probably worried when you're going overseas and with the climate and stuff like that, but that's just parents. I don't worry about it. Can I just say, the first time Stevie took me on a plane, I knew he was taking flying lessons, right?

1:13:25So there's an airport, a small one in Philly called the Northeast Airport. She goes, Pop, let's go for a ride. Okay, I'm going, you know, and it's a Cessna, right? Was it a Cessna? Yeah, 172, I think. Okay. So again, this like cardboard plane, it was like so small. And he takes off and I hear this voice. Niner, Niner, one, you know, I hear this voice. Is that him? Is that him?

1:13:55And we flew over New York. Yeah, we did the corridor. This was pre-911. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the traffic jams. I'm thinking, how nice is this? No traffic jams. Here we are. And they're coming back. He calmly says, do you remember? I can't land here. There's no for some reason. You couldn't find you not couldn't find it. But you did. There was a problem landing where you want to land. No, it was. Well, maybe I said that. That wasn't the truth. The reality was. No, first of all, it wasn't. I didn't know it. We flew out of Prince. We're flying out of Princeton. So I was working in Princeton.

1:14:33Later, I flew out of northeast Philly, but this was out of Princeton, New Jersey. And it's a little tiny. I mean, it was even smaller than it was before they redid the runway. It's a little tiny non-towered airport surrounded by like farmland. It's really hard to find. I couldn't find the airport. I'm like – we came back from New York and I'm like, I see things that I recognize, but I can't find the airport. Thank you what I'm telling me. Oh, my God. Was it at nighttime or something? No, I just couldn't find it.

1:15:05The days before GPS. It was the days before GPS. And fortunately, I mean I had an instrument rating. This was actually – like I had been flying a little while. I didn't have a commercial yet, but I had an instrument rating. And as we were coming back into Princeton, I couldn't find it. And finally, I just flew up the Solberg VOR and flew the VOR Alpha down and basically flew an instrument approach in. I just was happy to touch down, even though I enjoyed it. I just remember feeling, oh, OK, that was great. But, you know, I couldn't overcome the actual. You're so used to, you don't even think about it.

1:15:38It's like not trying. I mean, I probably had like 250, 300 hours. You were relaxed. False confidence. acts like that? No, I wasn't actually. One of the first times that I flew my father was in a 172 and he wanted to fly me from Lexington, Kentucky to Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was in the cattle business and he wanted to go down there and do some kind of deal with a guy down there. My dad and his cousin got in the airplane. I just got my private pilot's license, took out from Lexington, Kentucky. This was the middle of summer. It was really hazy out it was probably three or four miles of visibility which i wasn't really used to and i started out on this cross country dialed in a vor and got over the mountains kind of like towards knoxville tennessee and i started losing the signal oh no and then the compass signal yeah and then the compass started processing and getting off on the wrong heading anyway i'm flying along i have no idea where i'm at and my oh and my dad says what city is that in front of us and i'm like um i think that's chattanooga he goes chattanooga doesn't have build big buildings like that he goes that's nashville oh my god and i'm like there's no way that that's nashville i mean that we're there's no he goes what else could it be he goes he pulled out a road map i had my multisectional and all that stuff he pulled out a road map and he goes look he goes look straight down there that's highway whatever it goes to nashville see that town right there that's what you're looking at right there he goes you need to turn you need to turn left story oh my god i was like i was directing you yes my dad like had to show me how to get to chattanooga tennessee And my dad was not a pilot.

1:17:39Had never been in an airplane, a small airplane before. I didn't think he was. So what about the landing? I mean, where did you land? Did you land there? Yeah, I made it to Chattanooga finally. And I actually made it, you know, back home to Lexington, Kentucky that night. He never said anything. I'm surprised your dad got back in the plane with you. Seriously. And his cousin. They never said two words about it. It was just kind of like it just got quiet. I turned left. I found Chattanooga, landed. and that was it. Was your landing good, smooth? Oh, yeah. You know, I could land great. I just couldn't find my way in the way.

1:18:13You know, I couldn't navigate. But I could land. Your landing was really good, too. That's so funny, man. You know, your landing that you did was really, I thought, professional, really good. I have the only memory I have. And so this is 20, this is almost 30 years ago. And I – the only memory I have of that entire flight is like – you know how when you think back and like distant memories, you can kind of remember stills? I remember the still of looking out the window, just like fixating, looking at the ground, trying to find the airport in the farmland. That's all I remember. I was so embarrassed.

1:18:55I'm like, oh, my god. Start panicking, embarrassment. Like, oh, my god. This can't be happening. This can't be happening. So how do you – so, I mean, forgive my ignorance, but, I mean, how do you know that there's not another plane coming your way? I mean, like – You didn't back then. You don't. Back then, it's visual. Come on. No, it's visual. You look – I mean, you look outside when you're in the airport environment. He couldn't see out of his plane? Not really. Yeah, I mean, three or four miles ahead of me, that was about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's visual. Visual flight rules mean you need to be outside with your eyeballs looking for traffic.

1:19:31Now, nowadays you still do, but there's technology now where you have proximity warnings. But didn't you recently tell me that you have an auto land thing? Oh, yeah. I mean, the jets that we fly, I mean, the jets that we, well, it's not like AI, but it'll track a localizer. It'll go into a flare mode. It'll, you know, it'll retard the power. It'll touch down on the touchdown markers. I mean. And you have to be there to guide it? I mean, what do you do? Yeah. I mean, you have to sit there and kind of watch the controls, but we don't use it regularly. Like Autoland is specifically for, first of all, it doesn't, it's not a real soft landing.

1:20:08Like the Autoland kind of, no, it can be, but it kind of drops it in. It's designed only to land in zero visibility. And we, since we're not an airline, we're not even approved to do landings in zero visibility. We test the Autoland systems as part of our flight test profiles. Oh, my God. That's going to make your mom real nervous. She's used to it now. I've been doing this for a minute. You know? I know. So, all right. Well, look. This was fun. This was great. It was fun. It was a great one. Do you want to play us out? Play you out? What do you want to hear? Do you want to hear rock? What do you want to hear?

1:20:47We don't want to hear rock. All of my world. Chosen Few I'll just play some really beautiful stuff Alright

1:21:35Wow. The lights went off. Something's happening. Oh, that was weird.

1:21:48I try to get my students to scat.

1:21:55Does the vocals help lead the hands? It's guaranteed to play what you hear. I always talk about play what you hear. I'm not a vocalist, but when you hear a note, if you put it in your head, here's one of the things I say. If you're playing a chord like this, you can listen to it but if you sing a note in that chord like if you sing, let's just say that if I go you're experiencing that chord in a completely emotional different way than if you are to say well I hear it but when you sing a note in there

1:22:34you know just the simplest thing like that you can really get But, you know, the schools wanted me, when I taught at some of the schools when I was younger, they wanted me to do the Mel Bay, which is... I mean, if a guy likes guitar, right, he's hearing guitar, I want to play guitar, and this is what he... He's living up the music and he's going...

1:22:55I mean, come on, man. How are you supposed to get happy with that? So I would show the kids, I would show them how to play this chord. Let me show you if I could call it up here. Make your fingers like this. and then move them back a string. And I'll say, just make up a song going...

1:23:16And this way, they're hearing the actual guitar make music. Yeah. And then once they fall in love with the sound of the guitar making music, then they'll go through all the other rigmarole that you have to do to learn things. But to start somebody out with a non-musical... It doesn't sound musical. Right. If you did that, maybe. Anyway, I love teaching, and it's a big part of my life now, you know. And I don't gig out as much, you know. I'll do, like, house concerts, but I like my life the way it is now. I'm inspiring. I got a lot of young guys, and I got two of my students are doctors. One of them saved my ass, you know, when I had the cancer.

1:24:05Wow. So I got those guys, and they're hard to teach. Yeah. Why? Because they're left-brained. Right. I had one guy, John, Dr. John. He's so great, and he's talented. I was like, John, John, John, you're not listening. John, John, hello? He starts with me. They're getting in their own heads. You know, it's just really hard to – girls laugh. You know, they hear me teaching him, and it's just funny. After I'm done with him, I'm, like, exhausted. But I have a lot of these young guys that are finished college, you know, and they're still like a little lost with making that connection between the feeling and the theory.

1:24:47Like you said, theory. A lot of people that study theory, believe it or not, never connected to their instrument. It's like an abstract thing. Yeah. Yeah. You know? I can totally see that. How, Dad, are you, like, what if somebody out there wants to maybe, wants to learn, wants to learn some improv from you? Is there, do you have something in place where they can reach out? Yeah. Just jzguru, jzguru at gmail. Okay. That's my email. And I'm happy to talk to anyone about music. Yeah. At life. I highly recommend. Highly recommend. You're going to get some weirdos emailing you and maybe some cool guys.

1:25:40I don't care. I'll help you. We're all weirdos here. That's my main email. That's my main email. You know, jazz guru. I'm a guru to these guys that come over here, you know. And I love teaching. It's really – to me, I mean, yeah, there's some money involved, but a lot of the students are so poor I hardly even charge them. You know, they're scuffling, you know. And it's not about money. It's about sharing, sharing the art. It really is. Well, you're very inspiring. I mean, you've always been very inspirational to me personally. Oh, thank you. But, you know, just your discipline with the music and your commitment to it.

1:26:19I relate to in a non-musical way with flying, you know. And I think Steve does too. And I think we relate to that very much. And passion, the passion you have for it. It really is. And, and the whole, you know, you know, I always felt like I was going to sell out if I went and, you know, did the airline thing after I kind of got into where I'm doing. I was like, you know, I'm going to stick with what I'm going to do. Even, even if I'm, I'm poor, stay poor doing it. It's just what, this is, this is who I am. And I enjoyed the feeling of what I can relate to as improvisation in what we do on a daily basis.

1:27:06Absolutely. It's something that I have to say. I think a lot of people look like we are undisciplined and disorganized. Why? Because you have a sense of humor? Yeah. But paradoxically, it may look like that on the surface. underneath it all, we're very disciplined and very skilled. Absolutely. And I relate so much to you in that area. You know, I have to say this one thing. It's quick. I know you're running out, but do you remember that guy Bob Ross? Oh, yeah, the painter. He was a painter. I have no painting. Yeah, I have no painting skill whatsoever. But when I saw him, let's put a tree up he grabs it he goes like this and I'm thinking well this is the analogy that I like to do with music for any age group like you don't have to study theory before you can compose you know start fooling around I teach people to fool around with music and listen you know it's like that the analogy of that guy I want it to be approachable like don't even think about composition and if you can't read you can't play you know I mean all that stupid stuff.

1:28:22Yeah. But that's the analogy I like to do. I like to make it really approachable. You make it like that and it's approachable. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's approachable. It should be fun. It shouldn't be like a discipline. Right. I'm sure you guys love what you do. Absolutely. And music, I mean, honestly, I've never been... The way that I interface with music now, and I play a little bit, but I don't have chops and skills, but I have an ear. I have a pretty good ear, and I think it's because I listen to so much music. But the way that I interface with music is by making these films.

1:29:04That's my artistic interface with music besides just listening to it. I mean I listen to a lot of music all the time. All day long there's music playing in my office. But other than that, I can't – there can't – Look, if I had to make a choice between being blind or being deaf, I would take being blind because I do. Yeah, because because it's it's so important to me and the way that my brain processes things, you know, the recall, like hearing a melody that recalls different times in my life or different moods or puts me in a mood where I can be creative or puts me in a mood where I can relax.

1:29:45So it's just so hyper important and I really – I think that parents should expose their children to good and varied music early so that they can develop that. I do too. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. There's a person I know, Bob Meece's sister, Kelly Meece. She's a vocalist and she's a very serious musical therapist. and she believes that music is that, what you're talking about, like in the extreme, you know, that certain pieces do this and that. Now, you know, I don't know anything, but I believe it. I'm not going to ever doubt it because music affects your emotions. All my compositions are based on emotions, every one of them.

1:30:32There's not any, even this cute little one for Steve-O, you know. it's not like I think I'll play something in C minor I didn't even know if it was C minor it's just instinctual it doesn't matter theory is after the fact you've heard that right? theory is after the fact you can theorize it later but when you're doing it I mean when they teach composition they imply that like Bach and Mozart and those people were thinking about theory when they're doing it. No, they're like jazz players like me. They're like fighting shit. And then people answer. So it's a wrong impression to think that I've got to study theory in order to compose.

1:31:16No, no, no. Compose with your ears. Get some tactical skill if you need that. I mean, it's frustrating if you can't play. I mean, that's why, you know, the way piano's taught is, instead of teaching music. If I was going to teach a little kid, you know the first thing I would say?

1:31:39Pitch match. Some people can't do that. People can't pitch match. Make the connection in your mind. You hear a note? You should be able to do that. Seems simple. Aunt Terry. Aunt Terry. That was good. That was good. I knew she was going to come up again. A little inside family humor here. When I was a kid, I was playing stuff, and Terry would go, that doesn't sound like that. Shut up, Terry. It's his mother's sister, my great aunt. She's been gone for a long time, but notoriously pitch deaf. Tone deaf, completely. Oh, my God. I think that's important to make that connection. I agree. This has been fun.

1:32:36We'll do it again. I also – maybe we'll do it from the studio the next time we record. I'm going to be needing more music probably in the fall. So we'll roll that up. We can rattle up the guys. Yeah, they enjoyed it. It's a lot of fun. And, you know, the only thing the first time we did it, we had to do it in the morning, like 9 o 'clock in the morning. Yeah. Thinking about space music 9 o 'clock in the morning is kind of – Thinking about anything at 9 o 'clock in the morning. Yeah, that doesn't work. That definitely doesn't sound like it works for musicians at all on any level. It's hard. It's hard.

1:33:06You know, I'm such a night person. It is hard. Yeah, I knew that our podcast schedule would work for you because we do it at night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would get up for it. It doesn't matter. But it's just funny. Okay, man. Thank you so much. And I'll be looking forward to it. I know that Terry is going to be excited. Yeah. I know he'd be disappointed if I didn't get his ass in there. It's in there and I'll put it in the show notes as well. He's a great guy, man. Check it out. Listen to more Steve Giordano jazz. Well, always you can hear it on Cockpit Casual and you can hear it on Terry's Nordic Helicopter Aviators.

1:33:48Yeah, and please put my email down there so that people can reach me. All right. I'm very useful. I'm very useful. Careful what you wish for. I'm good. I'm very down with communication. All right. Your wish is my command. All right, guys. All right, I'll see you. Take it easy, Bob. You too, Steve. Great to see you. Take care of that time. I'm trying to. I'm trying. You take care of yourself as well. Yeah, boy.

1:34:33Thank you.