MC: That was a place where my influence really started….the influences of those teachers and playing the standards, and playing in small groups and really getting the opportunity to experiment with sounds, like, you know, you got your traditional quartet set-up and your traditional quintet set-up, things like that. But then you could also do other things. They would encourage you to write, they would encourage you to take music theory classes and things and then they would say “Okay, now that you’ve got this, listen to this guy, he’s gonna apply what we just talked about.”
Smitty: Oh, cool.
MC: So he would say “We’re gonna listen to….we’re gonna learn ‘Maiden Voyage.’ Now go actually listen to Herbie (Hancock) play it and listen to the application of it rather than just learning the chords.” So I think those influences started there, then there were series. We went through Duke Ellington, we went through a whole series of people. I mean, Lee Morgan, Herbie (Hancock), Chick (Corea), and then of course you mature a little bit, you start hanging out with your own crowd, and before I knew it, I was playing some very tough material, you know, that you’re not supposed to be playing when you’re in a band in high school.
Smitty: (Laughing.)
MC: And subsequently, you know, I fell in love with playing big band music, so I started my own big band.
Smitty: Did you really?
MC: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I just found some tapes of some big band stuff that I wrote and arranged a long time ago, and the guys around L.A. were just like willing to come out and just get in the studio and just record my tunes so I could hear what I wrote. And then I can go back and arrange or fix my arrangements if I didn’t like the way something sounds, so that’s how I kinda learned so much about arrangement and sounds. So the influence started back at the R.D. Colburn School.
Smitty: Wow, that’s quite a story. Talk about when you wrote your first composition and then you actually heard it. What was that like?
MC: My first composition that I ever wrote…. you’re gonna laugh. (Both laughing.) I used to listen to the radio….88.1, it’s a jazz station out here….it used to be KLON, now it’s KJAZ,….and I used to listen to that radio station every night. When I went to bed, the radio would be on and I would go to sleep listening to that radio station, so if anybody knows something about the subconscious….hearing something subconsciously, they obviously were playing a tune that I woke up and thought I wrote. (Both laughing.) I went to the piano and wrote it down, went to the Colburn School, let them play my tune, they started playing, it was like “Okay, wait a minute. This sounds too much like ‘Shining Stockings.’”
Smitty: What?
MC: (Laughing.) I thought I wrote that tune! (Both laughing.) That was the first tune I ever wrote, somebody else’s tune. Then after that I started just finding other things—I just found some chord progressions and some colors that I liked, that just like, everybody wasn’t playing. And I’m thinking “Everybody knows these chords and everybody knows these voicings, but it’s very obvious that everybody doesn’t know these chords and these voicings.” And for whatever reason, I just kind of, not capitalized, but I just really got a good understanding of those colors and I started using them in everything that I did, but as I got more into writing my own things, those colors just became signature, you know?
Smitty: Yeah, your sound.
MC: You can hear those colors in every record that I’ve ever done. There’s some signature that I put on every record. I don’t know what it is, but you kinda just know that’s me.
Smitty: How ‘bout that? That’s your vibe, man.
MC: Yeah, and people are really receptive to it. It’s like “Okay, this is something new and personal. We haven’t heard this.” It’s like, you know, Horace Silver had his signature on everything; McCoy Tyner had his signature; even Herbie has a signature.
Smitty: Oh yeah.
MC: And I didn’t realize I had my own signature. People knew….there’s a television show that I write for called GIRLFRIENDS, comes on UPN.
Smitty: Oh Yeah.
MC: People know me by listening to that show. (Both laughing.) So I get my friends that didn’t know I was actually writing that show, “Hey, man, this thing sounds like you.” Well, it’s because it is me. It’s me writing those things that started so long ago, it kinda just developed and me writing my first tune, it even started there because I hear things like that. And by me doing that show, it only enhanced my writing even more, but not only that, it taught me a skill that I could not otherwise have learned.
Smitty: Yeah.
MC: You know, I could not have learned how television music actually works. I mean, to a lot of people it’s kind of a mystery, but it’s not brain surgery.
Smitty: Yeah, I can imagine. But you gotta be in that whole scene to understand it.
MC: Right, right, and I did. It just so happened that it worked out that I did that for the last five years. From 2001 to 2005.
Smitty: Do you enjoy that aspect of making music?
MC: No.
Smitty: Yeah, I wonder because when I hear this record and I’ve watched GIRLFRIENDS and I could understand some of that vibe of doing things for TV.
MC: Right.
Smitty: This record has got to be a whole lot more enjoyable.
MC: Oh man, this record is for people that love music. What I had to do for television was just to appease a whole bunch of people who really didn’t care about the music like that. I mean, it was secondary. But the attitude behind this record for me was….the attitude was: You know what? I am not going to confine myself to being commercially correct. I’m not going to confine myself to doing music that….I’m shooting for the radio. And, you know, this is what people have been asking me for. Just be me.
And that’s what you hear right here. You just hear me just being creative; I’ve never been that type of person that is commercially correct. I don’t like commercial music. Commercial music takes away from the artistry, takes away from the creativity, because now you’re doing something corporately. (Laughing.) Which I don’t too much care for. I mean, I’ll do it if I have to.
