For some reason this etude is especially challenging for me. If I went a little faster, then you can hear the dampening mallet almost ring. I tried using harder and softer mallets and these worked the best. I tried to keep the dampening mallet quiet and still feel and express the song.
To get it to this point, believe it or not, I practiced it a LOT. It is elegant and there's nowhere to hide! You can hear everything.

I've told this story a million times. So sorry if you heard it before.

When my 1st wife was pregnant she came home and said so many woman were pregnant at the save time. I said I bet it's not any more than usual however you are pregnant and now you're seeing all these other pregnant women. We got into a big fight!

The point is, sometimes just doing stuff will pay off later.

Practice dividing the octave up into 3 parts and don't worry about why. I can do it very easily and if you can't then you should so we both can do it, think about it and talk about it.

Larry Mckenna as some of you know was my teacher when I was young and in college.

He is such a pure musician. He really taught to think about all the extra crap we add. I know I still add it, but hopefully because of him I add a lot less.

I'm a Vince G fan!

Here's a lesson I wrote years ago on Misty. I had permission from the owner who was Erroll Garner's wife. Then it turned out that she sold it to Warner Brothers. I contacted Warner Bros. and I paid them and they issued me a license for the licensing giving me permission for this lesson and then I got a letter from Hal Leonard stating that they owned the rights to it so I just gave up. But I think it's okay to share with y'all.

Here is a blues article I wrote many years ago. It's a different approach than what I learned at Berklee which I believe caused me to overthink the blues. I taught it quite successfully to many students so if you're starting out or struggling to express in the blues form and style, give this method a go. Once this basic idea of the blues is in your ears and hands, it's much easier to add more sophisticated things on top of it.

Don't always look for reasons and explanations as to why to do something.

But I can take most of the tunes I know and play 3rds and 7ths only. Can you?

I used to really check out anything a great player could do and then I would do it. I didn't give a flying %$%$ why or what or harmonically this or that. I just saw they were doing it and I wasn't and couldn't. I figured if I was great then I could do it. That was my why to do it. Get it?

Who is Gene Estes?

I saw this title of his record and knew nothing about him and just thought I'd buy it for the arrogance of his title. I've started to listen to it and man he sounds good so far! Serious cat!

Do you guys know about him? There's no recording of this on Youtube. And I think no cds, only this old record I found.

Tell me about Gene Estes.