Nigerian Marketplace

I seem to be posting alot about piano instruction videos but here is a good one of Oscar Petersons great piece Nigerian Marketplace. I have to play this in a gig this month so have found this very useful particularly regarding voiceings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4IPA3a8iDw

Indian music and Jazz

Here is an interesting article on Indian music in jazz I found on the Congo square website - home of the Kolkata Jazz Festival.

http://www.congosquarejazz.com/Indian_Music___Jazz.pdf

Giant Steps Rhythmic Flexibility

As soon as I saw this link on David Valdez's Blog I knew this was something I wanted to practice. Here are a set of rhythmic exercises using different groupings of 8th notes (3's, 5's,6's and 7's) on the chords of giant steps.


http://casavaldez.posterous.com/giant-steps-rhythmic-flexibility-exercises

Professional Saxophone Musician / Player Set-Ups

Thanks to the people that informed me that this link was no longer working. It was a popular post and it needed to be updated. The Theo Wanne site doesn't seem to have that list any more but here are some other links to have a look at. In fact since I wrote this post there is more to be read on this subject. The Nicolas Trefeil page is even listed by chronoligical order! Very nice.

http://mysite.du.edu/~abouton/mpce.html


http://mysite.du.edu/~abouton/mpce.html


https://cafesaxophone.com/threads/what-the-pros-use.4004/


On his excellent site on just about everything to do with mouthpieces Theo Wanne has published a list of professional sax players setups. Ive seen some others on the web in the last few years but this seems to be the most extensive and up to date list:

http://www.theowanne.com/mouthpieces101/playerSetUps.php?pid=5

www.jazz.com

It's great when you find something new to read on the net and www.jazz.com really has plenty to offer. With hundreds of articles, interviews, reviews, blogs posts and a forum this really is a great resource for jazz lovers.

Stevie Wonder Tribute

A small clip I found from the tribute show we did in chennai from Rediff.com

http://ishare.rediff.com/video/entertainment/a-tribute-to-stevie-wonder/640242


Actually there are lots more on the same site... just seen that!

http://ishare.rediff.com/video/entertainment/a-tribute-to-stevie-wonder/640245

More Doug McKenzie

In case it is easier, or you prefer to watch some of the vidoes from Doug's site online there are many posted on you tube, and they have been listed at http://www.pianologist.com/.

http://pianologist.com/piano-videos/learn-jazz-piano-playing-from-doug-mckenzie-at-youtube/

Pianologist looks a very nice site too. Lessons, transcriptions and videos.... Just watching a clip from one of my favourite pianists Dave Newton.

Chromatic warmup

Here is a little warmup I have been working on recently. I have found it useful for both the fingers, as well as warming up the feeling and sense of rhythm before tackling other things. I usually start quite slow, maybe 100bpm and gradually increase. As the metronome is kept on the 4th beat only I had to download a program that could play slow enough as my normal one only goes as low as 40. I use weird metronome as you can program it to play anything you like. Of course this type of exercise is open ended, and can be applied to scales or other patterns as well as different accent and rhythmic variations.

http://www.pinkandaint.com/weirdmet.shtml

Advanced saxophone lessons

Here is a great blog I just found dedicated to saxophone techniques and improving your playing. The site is written by Andy Hampton author of "Saxophone Basics"

http://advancedsaxophonelessons.blogspot.com/

Choosing a new sax

A student of mine recently sent me a mail about choosing a new saxophone. In my research i found this very useful site on the web.

http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk/Reviews/Pro_saxes.htm

shwoodwind.co.uk is an excellent site with lots of information and reviews as well as sound :-) advice on buying the right sax.

blanksheetmusic.net

As an addition to the previous post here is the link for another useful site regarding free score making tools. This online tool doesn't actually allow you to input notes but is a program for setting up and printing your own blank score layouts. It's quick and easy to choose any number of staves, clefs, keys and lines by clinking on the relevant icons. It even comes with a flash tutorial to help you out.

www.blanksheetmusic.net

Summertime

Ok, so this is it. It's been a while since Ive managed to post because of my hectic schedual the last month or so. Now finally summer is here - at least in India that is - and I'm back to working on my music. First up is composing as I really would like to be playing new material next year. I'm not very good with notating scores on the computer so I also decided to write up all my existing pieces. Less complaints now hopefully about my writing from other musicians!

Anyway, was browsing the web and found this very useful site for free music software. www.making-music.blogspot.com has an extensive list of what is available out there including free notation software. I downloaded Finale notepad 2008 and was quite impressed. It certainly has it's limitations and is a bit fiddly (took me an hour to get 4 bars per line) but otherwise it's a good program available for free.

Doug McKenzie Videos

As I said in my Tweet there is even more to the Doug McKenzie jazz piano site than first meets the eye. What I have most liked - (apart from the hundreds of audio and midi files!) are the videos. They come with detailed annotations and explanations of the techniques used, as well as the visual help of being able to see the hands or notes as they play. Really top stuff.

Doug McKenzie Jazz Piano

Thanks to Harish, sax player from chennai for this link. Wow, I don't think Ive ever seen so much good stuff for jazz piano in one place. Doug McKenzie's site contains literally hundreds of downloadable WMA midi files, videos and audio as well as transciptions and explainations that go along with the audio. It could take years to go through all of this!

http://www.bushgrafts.com/jazz/home.htm

Ear training software

Following an evening in which I really got quite hooked on the various ear training tools in Band in a Box I decided to look on the net for similar software.
Compiled by Jimmy Ruska the link below has many programs, both freeware, online and commercial.

http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/7_Musicians_Free_Ear_Training.php#3

www.freejazzinstitute.org

Can't believe Ive never seen this before. Super useful site for jazz musicians to discuss and share all things related to jazz theory and analysis. Try the link below for a more detailed description of the site:

http://www.freejazzinstitute.org/aboutfji.php

Cornelius Bumpus

Watching a video of Steely Dan's the other night I was enjoying the solos of tenor sax player Cornelius Bumpus - Chris Potter was playing in the same group but somehow these touched me more. Wanting to find out more about him I googled and found out that sadly he had died in 2004 of a heart attack. Fortunately www.corneliusbumpus.com is still there and has lots of information, links to buy his cd's as well as mp3 preview clips.

Indigo Jazz festival Bangalore

We were very happy to be invited to play again this year at the Indigo jazz festival in Bangalore. Here is a review of the two day event by the Hindu's excellent jazz writer JAZZEBEL.

http://www.thehindu.com/mp/2009/02/09/stories/2009020951240300.htm

Mixing up scales

Just a little exercise I found to practise major scales a little differently. Ascend in the normal way but coming down change the 2nd and root, to the corresponding degrees of the scale a semi tone above. ie C B A G F E D# C#. Continue by ascending in the new scale you have now reached and apply the same idea. Once this is completed in all keys on the descent try changing the last 3(4, 5 etc) notes to the scale chromatically above.

This was an idea i wanted to try in order to improve my fluency and flexibility of changing from one scale to another during soloing. Lets see if it works! I see there are many more possibilities to this and will post some more ideas when I find them.

All about jazz forum

Ive been following several music forums by RSS feed for some time including the excellent saxontheweb. Somehow I had missed the forum at allaboutjazz.com but its another very good resource with alot of reading on just about every area of jazz possible.

http://forum.saxontheweb.net/
http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/

Famous Jazz Quotes

“A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He’s above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.” - Herbie Hancock

Here's a nice idea by Matthew Mullenweg, a founding developer of WordPress who has added a section to his site dedicated to famous jazz quotations. He has collected quotes from different sources and categorised them by musician. Apart from the more humorous ones, some of them are very beautiful and I think there is plenty to be learnt from these too.

“My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being … When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups … I want to speak to their souls.” - John Coltrane

http://ma.tt/jazzquotes/

Guitar and Drum Trainer

For practising aebersolds and other such play-alongs this is a must have program.Ive been using the freeware v2 for years and now have been trying the latest version. It easily and quickly allows you to slow or speed up recordings as well as change pitch with little noticeable breakup of the audio. On top of that it has a great EQ which can even be used to filter out the drums. Available for download is version 4 which comes as a 15 day trial version.

http://renegademinds.com/Products/GuitarDrumTrainer/tabid/65/Default.aspx