Blog

I'm here working on some forms I have to fill out and have Pandora playing a John Adams Station I made. All of sudden this marimba comes on and it's beautiful and articulate and stops me dead in my tracks. It's Evelyn Glennie and I just go WTF.

She plays great. How does she do it? What is she hearing? I hear her talk about it, but sometimes I go yeah right. But man she can play.

I posted about transcribing some MJQ and hearing mistakes in the recording and feeling a little funny about it. This is one of my favorite groups, but I was complaining a little bit!

My punishment was that the video - 'Modern Jazz Quartet, Django. True Jazz Inovators in Their Best Filmed Performances' came today. I'm in the middle of it now, all black and white so far. Between that and the looks of them this must be early on. They sound SO good. Milt sounds beautiful! Thanks for putting me in my place Almighty Amazon.com!

So tell me how you found the vibraphone?

Here's my abridged version.

I played classical guitar growing up and was very serious about it. I also played drums and then picked up piano as a teen.

I almost went to school for piano, but some weird stuff happened with piano lessons and I quit on a dime as they say.

So I'm transcribing some MJQ. I remember (I think) Gary Burton talked about them not being good readers. Ok. I'm taking down the tune 'Don't Stop This Train'. It's a sort of fugue. Well I've found 2 mistakes and I think they cut out a John Lewis bad note. I don't know, maybe I'm totally wrong here.

But I'm thinking what happened on this recording? Didn't they want to fix the mistakes? Was it late in the band's career and they didn't care? Were they fighting? Did they have only one hour left of studio time and they had to get this down. Didn't they practice the tune at home.

Hey we're going to have an open house August 5th at the workshop at the University of Delaware. It will start at 2 and go untiil about 8 or 9. You can listen to a David Friedman workshop and then we'll have a little performance later in the evening after dinner.

Who wants to come and hang?

August 6th in the evening will be our final concert so we hope you can come or come back for that.

I took down my Chi Chi study, because it's flawed!!!!

I just learned the head yesterday and threw the changes underneath that seemed to fit in my mind. but i should have listened to the whole thing, especially if i was going to do a lesson on it. Of course I've listened to it before but yesterday I was just moving quick. There are one set of changes for the head and a normal blues for the solo. I was basically right for the head. I still don't hear 7th's in the first Ab. And listening to Parker's solo and referencing the Omni book I would argue he doesn't either (more to come).

Dana titled his blog with a date and I dig that. That means we can just title the blogs with the dates and talk about whatever! So great idea Dana.

Man I just made a John Adams radio station. You guys know him? I think he took the minimalist thing to a place that I really dig. I'm really into the music that that station plays.

Here's a link to the Pandora Station:
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh251068476568477366

So yeah, a really really great gig last night. It's a large part to do with this site and our discussions and seeing what everybody is up to.

I was looking around to see if anyone has posted a transcription of Milt Jackson's tune Bag's Groove and I have yet to find one. I'll keep the search going, but I figured I would post my version too. I hope some of you get a chance to check this out. Oh, and by the way...this solo comes from the album "The Birth of the MJQ". I'm pretty sure I found it on iTunes.

Hey VibesWorkshop,

I just wanted to share some thoughts here....
Tonight I was thinking about my vibes practicing, and jazz practicing more in general....
As you know, my set of vibes (my dear old Deagan from 1942) is not at my home anymore, but in the practice room. The thing is that I don't practice anymore at home. Before that, I didn't really practice at home, I simply couldn't get focused enough. That's why I got the practice space...

Anyway, I just figured out I had a MIDI piano, and maybe I could work on some things with it?