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For Someone I Love - Sunflower - Milt Jackson

Pretty epic huh? I haven't listened to it for a long time. I installed Ubuntu on one of my PC's and set up last fm on it and have been listen to things I haven't heard in a long time.

Is that Freddie on trumpet? What a trumpet solo.

The cut I just listened to was Ella singing Mack the Knife. They have the wrong CD listed. Isn't this Live in Berlin? Where she forgets the words? Wow, who is the piano player on that? That is so swinging and then Ella does a Louie solo. OMFG.

Don't Underestimate the Power!

I just had a great lesson with my student/buddy from Ohio, Jon Letsky. It's great to do the online lessons because I can see what I post in action. He's practicing invitation and doing the quarter note solos, chord tone solos and playing the tune through the keys and he's kicking ass with it all.

It's not a requirement to post stuff, but affirmation, completion and closure are important. At least with private students I get to see the stuff in action. What I've learned is at these ways of learning tunes DO work. I've seen them happen way too many times for it to be anecdotal.

Internet Explorer Part 2

We've been working trying to solve the Explorer problem but the reality is that Explorer is a big problem on any site. If you look through any CSS or html book, you see these parts where they show how to do cool stuff with the programming languages and then they tell you if Explorer can do it and if there's a way how to hack it to work. This has been forever.

Nothing I can say about loyalty, if you're into Explorer then ok, but if you're open, get Firefox, check out the cool add ons and then have a much better experience on the Internet.

Create Your Masterpiece

I think Joe Locke talked about creating your masterpiece or chipping away at it in one of his lessons.

I think we should always be creating our masterpieces, that is playing something where we're creating a final product of some sort. If you're not doing that, then I don't know how you're going to grow.

From a Half Step Above

Man I listened to some Bud a while back and it got me hooked on the sound of going to the one chord from a half step above. Like Db to C. I love that sound and have been pulling it out all over the place. It's pretty cool. It's sort of like getting to the tri tone sub all the time.

Then I played a little gig with John Ellis (sax) over the weekend. And man he is a line manipulator! Being in that frame of reference and then listening to him was a great experience for me. It gave me so much to think about. It's kind of like being chromatic in a diatonic way. Does that make sense?