Skip to main content

James Whiting (AUS) releasing debut album in New York this TONIGHT!! (11/25/11)

Time

Hey everyone!

Been a while since I've been up on here unfortunately, but I have some exciting news!

I'll be back in New York for some gigs to release the album I recorded at Bennett Studios last December - BURBANK.

If anyone is in New York TONIGHT (November 25th) I'll be playing at Somethin' Jazz Club on west 52nd St 8.30pm -10.00 with some great cats!

Look forward to seeing anyone there!!

James

Bebop

Vince Lardere, a great local alto player came to University of the Arts and did a workshop on the bebop scale that the students LOVED. So I asked Vince to come over so I can video the workshop. This was great stuff. So maybe we should start a little series on 'Lines and Licks'.

A Wealth of Information - Statistics

I was looking at some things today on the site. I found out a couple things. We have over 6,000 individual posts on the site and over 24,000 comments.

Those are very rough figures but they give an idea of what's here. There is a LOT of information now on this site.

Just remember to also check out the vbooks (http://www.vibesworkshop.com/book). Things in there will stay there in the order they are in. While not everything is in there yet, a lot of the early lessons are there.

Just thought I'd pass that on. 6,000 posts and 24,000 comments is a lot of talking about the vibraphone!!!

New open source music notation software

I've recently discovered an excellent new software product for music notation that (I think) competes favorably with the expensive packages like Sibelius and Finale. It's called Muse Score and it is distributed as a free download. You can find it here: Muse Score.

The interface is logical and seems to be well thought out. You can save your files in a variety of formats including .pdf and .xml. As far as I can tell this product will work for anything you want to create, from a simple lead sheet to a full orchestral score.

Polytimbral Tambourine - Carlo Rizzo

I got this link on FB from Canadian vibist Robert Pelletier and it reminded me so much of Joe Porter's tambourine. Sorry explanations are in French as it's from a musical program in France with aim of making accessible and fun to all classical and jazz music.

The image/sound sync is not good either, but maybe the images speak enough by themselves and show the instrument functionning quite closely.

- Around 4"30 there's a first demo about the cymbals.
- Around 5"51 Carlo shows how he changes the pitch of the tambourine by unbending the skin.