So when I was in college I came up with this plan that really helped me. It's a little over the top, but it could be a good guide for some of us.

In school it helped me keep the music going. Even after I graduated I kept this going and it helped me, I think stay in the business.

Here it goes, first:

Ear Training: 1 hour equals 2
Practicing: 1 hour equals 1 hour
Listening: 1 hour equals 1.5 hours
Jamming and gigging: 1 hour equals 3
doing music business stuff: 1 hour equals, .5 hours
teaching: 1 hour equals 1 hour

This is an original by me. Thought I'd post it. If there's something I miss, it's just coming up with stuff. I don't consider myself a composer, but I do write tunes. If had my own music school (wait, I sort of do don't I?) 2 hours of the day would be for students to sit and write stuff. Just come up with things.

2 hours would be ear training, 4 hours (in 2, 2 hour blocks) would be playing in an ensemble and 2 hours would be listening and 2 for theory. It would be 6 days a week.

Glad I got that off my chest!

So going along with with tmacoids great posts I thought I would post some tunes.

I love playing rock tunes. These are MY standards, the tunes I grew up with, and they have a lot of meaning to me. There are many ways to play these tunes. Some guys like to alter the changes and mess with the harmony. I thing there's a whole musical world to discover by playing the tunes as is and developing that harmony organically. Just my thought.

last night i had some time welll not really time ..lol ..instead of watching tv i mess with my recording studio... so i imported the portland session into the program and remixed it.

musicians on session

T Macaoidh Vibraphone
David Valdez, alto sax
Michael Pappillo, Bass
Ken OLLis, drums

Tracks areL

AFterThought.. Tmacaoidh circa 2002
A lotis on Irish STreams... BIRD OF FIRE

all are first takes .. 100 percent sighting reading ... oh yess i was an afternoon in the laboratory...

jah bless

http://www.steveyeager.com/Home.html Says it all. Check him out, I think you'll love Steve's playing and if you haven't heard him already, this should be a treat. Also a real nice person and we'd love to hear from him at www.vibesworkshop.com

check out samples at his web site and then... (buy something)

Here's a prerequisite for the Shapes and Patterns of Music sight reading. My recommendation is to play these exercises as fast as you can but start at the beginning no matter how proficient you already are. If it's too easy, play it faster!

Check this out. This is not the greatest mix .. one mic in the middle of the room. on a sunday afternoon in portland oregon. my friend david valdez would have weekend session at his crib and would invite some kiler players that lived in portland or were passing thru on tour. just a huge laboratory.. we would all just throw tunes out and play ideas totally to the wind. and press record... Sphereology is a composition of mine that was actually composed in i think 1990 or earlier. This song bring back memories study with Mike Blake at UND.

This is something i dug up from the cellar. This recording in the pre master version of this tune. i dont think the cd ever was released. ive not heard the mastered copy which has tenor player Martin Feiro on it.

With all this talk about lines, I thought I'd remind everyone about some of the bebop heads. Donna Lee, Scrapple, Anthropology, these are major studies in 'the language'. Not only the language of bebop but the language of music, how things resolve, how lines move. You could study Donna Lee for months and learn so much. That's a masterpiece in the art of the line.

To me that's as heavy as any 32 bars of Bach.