My Conversation with John Fedchock

AAJ: So, what is your writing process, how does that work for you?

JF: It... doesn't really work for me. No, it's not fun. I just have to stare at the blank sheet of paper for three hours, and then maybe write down a couple of things. I never really enjoyed writing, I enjoy finishing it and playing it. You know, if I couldn't play it, I probably wouldn't write it. But the past couple of years I've been traveling around playing more than anything, and basically in the back of my mind knowing I was going to be doing this recording, so the writing has kind of taken a back burner to the playing recently, but we've gotten some more gigs with the big band, and we're doing some festivals and things coming up and I just wanted to work some new material in. So, I figured I had a couple of weeks where I could set aside some time and do that. I tried to do that here for a while, but between hanging out with buddies and the phone ringing and horns honking outside, it was hard to concentrate, especially having been out of the routine of it for a little while. So I took off to Florida, where it was nice and quiet, I got a lot of sleep and got some nice things going. Hopefully it'll come out as I perceive it to come out in my mind, I won't find out until I hear it.

AAJ: And... how does that work, after you've composed something and you know what it's going to be for?

JF: Well, what I think I'll do this time, which I haven't had in the past, I now have software that I can at least plug in the music and listen to it back before I have to copy it all out and give to a band to be humiliated in front of. Sometimes... it's nerve-racking, especially if you copy the whole thing yourself, or if you pay someone to copy the whole thing. It's a big expense, or expense of time if you're doing it yourself, and if it's not right you have to go back and change it all. So at least now I can hear it, I can't write on the computer, I still need to use pencil and paper. At least now, once I get it on the scorer, I can put it on the computer and hear it back.

AAJ: How does that software work? I'm not real up on that.

JF: It's basically a sequencer, basically it's a big tape recorder.

AAJ: So you have to play it in.

JF: I'll play it in, yeah. On a keyboard, then you assign sounds.

AAJ: Oh, got it. Well, that's gotta be kind of fun. I mean, it could be kind of fun...

JF: It could be. I get so cringey about what it's going to sound like that, when I do it, you have to put in one part at a time, or you don't have to but I have very little keyboard skills to do more than that, so I put it on a very slow tempo and arrange each part by itself, rather than hearing the orchestration get thicker, I block all the other tracks out, so all I hear is what I'm playing. Because if I start to hear three voices, then four voices, then five, then all of a sudden it sort of sounds right, but it sort of sounds wrong, because the other stuff is missing, it just freaks me out. So I'd rather just play them in one at a time, comfortably, and then turn it on with all of them on, and then surprise surprise. It either sounds good or it doesn't.

AAJ: Yeah, interesting. Do you compose on the keyboard? Or piano...

JF: I compose on a little tiny Casio keyboard, it's like a pre-war model...

AAJ: You're kidding... Is it a palm-size Casio keyboard?

JF: Well, it's not quite that small, I have rather large hands but from my thumb to the end of my pinkie covers half the keyboard. It's only a three-octave keyboard, it was a little thing I bought in 1981.

AAJ: And it still works?

JF: It still works, and I've written every arrangement on it. And it sounds terrible, but I'm so used to it, the sound of the keyboard, that if a voicing sounds good I know a voicing is good if I can make it sound good on this keyboard. If I sit at a real piano, everything sounds good. So, if I sit at this thing and everything sounds bad, if I can make it sound good, then it's gonna be good. So when this thing breaks down... actually I have a friend who owns the exact same model, who rarely uses it, I said, "That's mine when this breaks. I'll buy you whatever you want, I'll buy you a synthesizer, but I gotta have that little Casio."

AAJ: That's funny. Would it be possible for you to compose on a real keyboard?

JF: Oh, I'm sure it would, yeah. But actually it's kind of convenient if I'm voicing something for the whole big band, I can fit it all in two hands, on a regular keyboard the keys are so wide I'd have to arpeggiate to hear the whole voicings, if the trumpets were up high. So I can play the whole thing without having to worry about any of that.

AAJ: Do you take that with you on the road?

JF: Yeah. I used to carry that in my suitcase on Woody's band.

AAJ: So, do you work on stuff when you're on the road?

JF: Rarely. Rarely. If I have a deadline or something... But, it's hard, because I need a larger stretch of time. I can't just sit down for a half hour and write. I need a big chunk of time, at least an hour and a half, two hours. Because there's probably twenty minutes where nothing happens.

AAJ: Right. You've got to get into kind of a...

JF: Trance. And when I am writing, and I get in that trance, then it's hard to pull myself out after I'm done. I'll write for three hours, then I'll go to meet some friends for dinner and I'm like a zombie for the first hour and a half, 'cause I'm so focused in on those little dots, then all of a sudden the big picture goes away, and I'm like a space case.

AAJ: Yeah, and your mind is still tucked into those little dots, while everybody else is diving into the first course. I've gotta tell you, that happens with writers of all kinds. So, doing the research for this I had some real surprises. You're writing liner notes, you're producing... how is that?

JF: It's been going good, I've been having fun doing that.

AAJ: Is it fun?

JF: Yeah, it really is. It's all the fun you have recording your own record, without the stress. That's the great part about it. The last one I did was Kim Pensyl's quintet recording, we did that out in Seattle. I've been doing this basically... I did it with Woody's band, but before that I did it when I was at Ohio State, there was an audio recording course that was part of the Jazz Studies degree, which it no longer is, but it was at that time and we intermingled with the audio recording students and the final project was mixing a big band recording. I'd like to hear what that sounded like, I don't remember, but I felt like I had a little knack for it. And then I helped mix and do post production on both of Woody's records too, so it wasn't that much out of the realm, when I started doing my own projects, to get comfortable with that. And fortunately, some of the projects that I've been hired to do producing for, I was able to use my engineer too, and we have a real kind of symbiotic thing going too.

AAJ: And is that Paul? (Paul Wickliffe, the recording engineer.)

JF: Yes. Believe it or not, we have the same birthdate. Same birthday.

AAJ: No way. Same year?

JF: No, not the same year.

AAJ: He's older, right?

JF: Yeah, he's a great guy, we work together well...

AAJ: Well, you're both Virgos, that's kind of good.

JF: It is kind of good, as long as you know where each of you is coming from. I don't know if Paul would say this or not, but I'm the sort that feels like once I've made up my mind that something is right, and I've really researched it, I don't want to bend. And so if you're working with someone who has that same attitude... unless they know that you're not treading on their territory, that you have good reason, or can explain your good reason to them. So, we have a little explaining every once in awhile, and sometimes I win, sometimes he wins, but it always turns out for the best. Works well with others...

AAJ: Yes, you get a one on that... Sounds like a good partnership. So, how have you gotten involved in producing these other people's CD's?

JF: As far as the producing goes, it started out from the success of my big band records. One of the handful of first recordings I produced after my own, and being involved in Maria's first CD, was a big band out of Seattle that said, "We really like the sound of your record, and you're a writer, so you know about the... " This happened to be a writer whose album I produced, and he knew I would understand the whole mentality of a writer, and what type of sound he was looking for, which overall was a different type of orchestral sound than I had in my band. But he knew I would have sensitivity to how he wanted to approach things, so, that's how that started, was just through the big band connection, and then just building a track record, the other one's came from that.

AAJ: Great. So, that's like a whole other type of career.

JF: Yeah. It's not like I'm doing that all the time, but every once in a while I get a nice little thing to oversee, or produce... yeah, it's nice.

AAJ: It must be pretty difficult, in a way, producing your own CDs...

JF: Well, the hard part is, you've got so much going on in your mind, the role of a good producer is to not let up and to be on everything, and on your toes, and on the edge of your seat, making sure nothing falls through the cracks... And so, at the same time, trying to do that, if it's your own recording, being a performer I have to be loose and relaxed, and those two things don't necessarily mix. You have to be taking care of business, and basically staring down the middle of the room, but thinking about things to your left and right, like "Okay. This has to happen, and we've got to do this, and when we get here, we've got to do this... " and giving people instructions, and then sitting in the room and trying to clear that all out and just be a player, that's the biggest hurdle.

AAJ: But... You wouldn't have it any other way?

JF: Well, unless I could find someone who I really trusted, but, being a true Virgo... It's really hard, unless I find someone who has the exact same sensibilities as I do. Obviously the recording aspect of it, the CD, is not going to make or break my monetary career. There is money that comes in from the sale of the recordings, but it's not like a huge money-making venture, like if it was pop music.

AAJ: You mean you're not right up there with Madonna?

JF: No, me and Eminem aren't going to be sharing any Billboard charts. But, basically what it is is a documentation of what you feel music is to you, and all of a sudden you're giving it to somebody else and it might end up being a little skewed, from what your view is.

AAJ: So, are you kind of looking forward to doing more producing, or are you still just into making the music?

JF: Well, I'm not actively calling people up and sending out resumes and CDs, I guess I could do that. In the back of my mind, it would be nice if someone would say, "Hey, we've seen these last four or five or six recordings you've produced and boy, would you like to do some producing for us?" On a regular basis for a company, I would love the opportunity to do that, but I haven't been actively pursuing anything like that. But it's a fun thing to do, and as long as it didn't get in the way of my playing, I would love to do it.

AAJ: So playing is still the first love.

JF: Yeah, as long as I can somehow keep the bills paid by playing, I'm great with that. So far, I haven't gone too far astray of that. The only thing that's taken me astray, a little bit, is the writing. But ultimately that keeps me playing. Just the fact that I write music that is published, got me playing opportunities outside of New York. This couple of weeks that I took to write the music that I'm writing, probably because both tunes are arrangements of existing tunes, the rights of which may or may not be owned by any particular publishing company, neither of these arrangements could ever possibly ever be published, for sale. So, I was telling my friends, "I've got two weeks. Lets see, what could I do? I could go to Maui, or I could hole up in a room, writing music that will make me no money that I could play with my band... " You know, it seems very absurd.

AAJ: Yeah. But you chose the latter.

JF: Yeah, so I'm a glutton for punishment.

AAJ: Just another way you show your dedication.

JF: But once again, if it wasn't something I could play myself, I wouldn't necessarily be interested. I was writing for a publisher, that still publishes my music, but they would occasionally request that I write something for a younger developing group, like easy high school, which I have done and I have several charts and actually they work very well when I go places that don't necessarily have the expertise to pull off some of my professional level charts, and they come in very handy. But basically, any type of thing that I've developed as far as my personality as a writer, as far as the types of voicings I use, the types of rhythms I use, orchestration... Anything that reflects my personal view of what writing is, I have to take away, to do those types of arrangements.

There are certain thick voicings and orchestrations that, unless they're played perfectly in tune, they just sound bad. And so, with younger groups, it's going to sound bad, there's no way you can get those to sound good. Or, there is a way, but it's possibly been sidestepped by educators, to get the quick gratification of something sounding good right away. So, immediately, my whole voicing technique has to be... I have to become something that I'm not, and then anything rhythmically active or intricate, that has to be evened out, and then your ranges are restricted, which isn't that big of a deal, but still you've got all these limitations. Then all of a sudden, I'll finish an arrangement and I'll look at it and I'll think, "Well, that doesn't really sound like me... " It might sound like Sammy Nestico, or it might sound like... And that's not to knock Sammy Nestico, he's a great writer, but, you know, the reason I write is to be an individual, and that kind of took that away. So, I will occasionally do that, but I kind of stopped doing that stuff on a regular basis.

The whole reason I wanted to write was just so I could play my own stuff. Because occasionally you'll play a bad chart, and you think, "I could write something better than this." That was the whole thing, was just proving that I could do it. And now that I've proved it, I've got to keep doing it. So, you've got to watch what you wish for. I almost wish that the first chart was a bad one, because I could have just given up, and I might be a better player by now.

AAJ: No, no... I think, in a way that it must increase the depth of your playing in a certain sense. I think that it must open up something that isn't necessarily there for non-writers.

JF: I hope so.

AAJ: It's sort of amazing knowing you, and hearing you, because sometimes listening to you play, I think that that must be where all of your emotion comes out. Do you feel like that's true at all?

JF: Well, I don't know about all of them, but a lot of them. That's something that I've just been working on forever, training myself to be able to do, because if you don't get your emotions coming out in your playing, then it's not going to be effective. So, yeah. Although in recent years, doing a lot of traveling and teaching and things, I've done more public speaking than I have ever done in my life, dealing with students and clinics and master classes, and you go to schools sometimes where kids just, for whatever reason, they don't want to ask any questions, so they just sit there. And, okay, you've got an hour, an hour and a half, and what do you do? Well, at first I floundered. Then I realized, okay, you've got to work up a show. Figure out what's important, and figure out a way to present it so if no one asks questions, okay, you go to that subject and you do your spiel.

AAJ: So what's next?

JF: What's next... Well, a bunch of traveling.

AAJ: Do you like traveling?

JF: Yes, I do. Because I know so many people all over the country, it's really not like traveling. No matter where I go I'm hanging out with buddies. It's always like a party. So, I'm finishing these arrangements, and then the next big gig with the big band, is at the IAJE convention.

AAJ: Yeah, are you excited about that?

JF: I am. They gave us a really good slot this year, we kind of got burned a couple of years ago, not due to IAJE, but there was a mix-up and they gave us a room that couldn't hold the number of people that wanted to hear us. We had to turn away about four hundred people. So, anyway, they gave us a nice slot, 7:00pm on Saturday night in one of their biggest venues, which actually helped spur on writing this new music. Actually, I had a choice of either having the big band play, or showcasing the small group and promoting the new recording. But, I kind of felt that the big band deserved a showcase, so I went with that, which in turn forced me to have to write. So, deadlines are a beautiful thing.

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