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Phew, it doesn't end. The semester is over which is great and I should be chilling for a few days, but Sharon's grandfather is 101 years old and we have to head to Texas and clean out his house which is sold monday. So I thought I'd get a few days to practice and to post some more stuff on the site. But nope, not until next Wednesday!

I think Dana has something up his sleeve though and will be posting something soon. Dana's lessons are cool, I always learn something from them and am sure you guys do also.

Hi All,

In Newsweek online, there's an article call "Jazz is Dead. Long Live Jazz" (see http://www.newsweek.com/id/226331). I'm not sure I can decode a coherent message from the article, but one of the comments seems to be about the friction between jazz's pop/dance music roots and it's art music present (and arguably last 40-50 years or so), and judging the quality of today's jazz vs. yesterday's on the basis of popularity is the wrong approach. It also seems to me that the article does better with "Jazz is Dead" than it does with "Long Live Jazz".

Man we had a great vibe hang today! Great players and great music! It seemed like we had the whole world together. I counted France, Netherlands, Germany, USA, China and Australia. Pretty cool huh?

It's like we have this growing community now of vibe players who love the instrument and want to play it well. That's really cool to me.

David Friedman said something great about the site. He said, the site was built around my hard work, and also vibe players with passion and desire. (Something like that). That floored me and it was the truth.

Hi All,

The recent discussion around Tony's post about Jason "Mallet Man" Taylor has me wondering what people here really think about the balance between letting the music speak for itself and showmanship.

In "check this out" I've put three performances with contrasting levels of showmanship and art. Two are way on the showy side -- Jason Taylor and the Ian Finkel performance on "History of Mallet Instruments". The third, Elio Villafanca, is what I would consider to be the standard "here's the music" style.

Man I've been working on the tune Beautiful Friendship and it's kicking my ass. The melody, and the phrasing feel really unique to me. And I'm trying to play the tune right down the middle and it's really really hard.

I'm finding I have to kind of study all the spaces in the tune so I can play the melody right. Next the tune's second A doesn't resolve which is a little unusual. And sometimes I want to resolve it just like the last A!

Joe Magnarelli is on the road right now in spain. So he posts little words of wisdom over at the trumpet.jazzimprovonline.com. Here's his most recent post. I thought it was cool.

Just did a clinic in Llieda Spain, and realized that
when you get down to it, copying from the masters is the quickest way to get better.
You can study scales and patterns, that's cool, but when
stealing from the classic records you're getting scales and patterns too.
And you're understanding them in the context of a tune.
For example, check Fee-fi-fo-fum (spelling?)

I am working on playing a classical piece. I try to play it like I am performing. If I make a mistake while playing a slow line, should I try and correct it during the performance, or should I just let it be and continue on? If it is a fast line, I have no choice but to move on.

Thanks,
Barry

Music does not exist in a vacuum. As musicians we all need other people to appreciate our playing skills and our compositions. A musician's highest goal is to make music that will reach a large audience and maybe, just maybe, make a difference to those who hear us.

The Quartet that I have been playing with for a few months now just decided to record a demo to give out to places so we can score some more gigs. We met up at a school in a choir room and mic'd up and ran through with minimal takes. Then the bass player ran it through logic. Pretty quick and dirty.

I decided that instead of posting all the recordings on here, I would just post my myspace page with all my stuff.

www.myspace.com/joedoubleday

the group is:

Joe Doubleday- Vibes
Dr. Cory Gavito- Piano
Mike Boyle- Bass
Hal Corn- Drums

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.