Tuesday, June 21, 2016

How to play better at gigs - Really!

If there was a single piece of advice I could give young people starting out in this line of work, it would be this: LEARN THE PIECES.

It is amazing really how often this is overlooked. Time and time again, (myself included), have looked at those bad shows and said 'what happened'?

Ninety percent of the time the answer is simple. 'I didn't know the pieces well enough and it lead to mistakes'

It is obvious when you think about it, but I would say it's the number one cause of bad shows. Whether it's because of lack of time, or laziness,  overconfidence or something else it is what contributes mainly to mistakes.

That said, if we want to get ahead in music, especially if you work in a lot of different music situations, this is the way you can get ahead of a lot of people regardless of your level. We have all been in shows where you've been playing along side technically superior musicians, but when they don't know the material, who has the better result?

It's not easy to do. It takes time and energy, and I'm sure we all feel it's taking precious hours away from our scales and technical studies. Still, the message is clear to me, and I've had my fingers burned many times and probably not for the last time!

LEARN THE PIECES

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

Jazz Fonts - Making chord charts

Unless you have purchased a program for notating chords this is a surprisingly difficult task. Even in word, fonts such as the 'Fakebook' type used in the old Real books seem to be closely guarded secrets or fairly expensive to buy. I've tried writing chord carts in I Real Pro too but I found that pretty unfriendly to use.

After a morning searching on the web this is what I found. I hope it makes your life easier in case you want to jot a few chords down in on a word processor.

An excellent explanation on Music Fonts by piano teacher Joy Morin:

http://colorinmypiano.com/2012/04/23/music-fonts/

The only fully usable chord font I could find found at Klarlied music. Thanks to Alan Humm.

http://klarlied-music.com/Fonts/chordsfont.html

Another good explanation on free Music fonts by Matthew Hindson. Includes a Saxophone fingering font!!:

http://hindson.com.au/info/free/free-fonts-available-for-download/

Please let me know if you find more. I will update this post as necessary.



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This I found later by Clemens Neiderberger - Realbook fonts for the LaTex document publishing system. Works pretty well. The fonts are included in the Zip file.




Sunday, June 05, 2016

Caustic 3 - First impressions

Sometimes you don't just buy music making tools for work. Some simply fall into the category of pure fun. Caustic is in the latter.

I don't think I've had more fun with a music software since the early days of Reason, but this is different. You can do everything on your phone!

I don't have an expensive phone, but within minutes of installing this software I was making and editing music as if it was on my laptop. I couldn't believe it.

Like Reason, it is inspired by rack mounted synthesizers and it even has a similar feel. What surprised me though was how much depth such a small application had. The kind of sounds you can create are virtually limitless and the pattern and matrix editors are as easy to use as FL studio or any other.

This type of music tool is definitely more geared towards electronic music, but I had a quick look at some of the acoustic instruments and they sound amazingly good. On Google play there are hundreds of demos and presets you can download for free to get you going even further.

A must have for any music enthusiast and for the price of a pint of beer, you can't go wrong.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.singlecellsoftware.caustic&hl=en_GB

Saturday, June 04, 2016

Amit Heri - Live at B Flat Bangalore

In February I had the pleasure to play with these fabulous musicians. These are some of India's finest.

This is a composition by Amit Heri entitled Elephant Walk.

Amit Heri - Guitar
Keith Peters - Bass
Gino Banks - Drums
Matt Littlewood - Soprano Sax


Friday, June 03, 2016

Professional Saxophone Musician / Player Set-Ups

This was one of my most viewed posts but sadly the link was out of date. Thanks to those who pointed it out. Here is the revised post.

http://saxindia.blogspot.in/2009/07/professional-saxophone-musician-player.html

4 Habits to better practicing

Thanks to Thomas Drouin for sending me this. A nice video podcast from learnjazzstandards.com on practising.

Some great advice, and a good one to continue from my last post. More to follow soon.