Fusion gig with Sangoma Everett

Last month i had the pleasure of doing a couple of gigs with fantastic American drummer Sangoma Everett. The band features Debi Prasad Gosh on Sarod, Mishko M'Ba on Bass, Sangoma Everett on Drums, Manosh Bhardan on Tabla and myself on Keyboards and Sax.

He is the link to the Auroville Radio who recorded the gig live at Bharat Nivas Auroville.

http://www.aurovilleradio.org/arts-a-culture/music/1733-fusion

Download or listen directly on the site.

Bale Pandiya

Some time last year i was asked to play a couple of songs for the new Tamil movie Bale Pandiya with music by composer and singer Devan Ekambaram.

Here is one of the songs, a nice ballad with a short soprano solo in the middle.

http://www.raaga.com/player4/?id=207392&mode=100&rand=0.4338272410921462

More Rhythm training

Recently i have been back working on ear training with software such as GNU Solfege, in particular memorising and recognising rhythmic patterns. Looking on the web for more things to work on, i found this great site called worldjazz.ce that has pages of rhythm training exercises with mp3 files attached. Just click on the exercise you want to work on and play along till you feel comfortable. Great stuff!

http://www.worldjazz.ch/rhythm_training.htm

If you havn't already got it do download GNU solfege too. Its a wonderful tool for improving your ear.

www.solfege.org/

jazzandsaxmonthly.com

I came across this by accident. Its a website for saxophone lessons and techniques by Evan Tate. Ive seen some of his videos before on youtube and have found them very good. You can try the video lessons for free for 7 days, after which you have to pay. Evan offers monthly lessons on subjects such as improvisation, intonation, altissimo, of at least 30 minutes in length with PDF exercises. He also offers the option to contact him via email or SKYPE for any further questions.

http://jazzandsaxmonthly.com/

Like Sonny: The Story of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane

Here is one of my favourite Podcasts from Bret Primack's you tube videos. It features Sonny Rollins talking about John Coltrane. Fascinating stuff. You can also follow jazz video guy on Twitter for blog updates.

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

Jazz Video Guy

If you haven't already seen his video podcasts do check out Bret Pimack - Jazz video guy - on you tube and his own site http://www.jazzvideoguy.tv/

There are many very interesting videos on famous jazz personalities with commentary by Bret himself. A wonderful resource.

Sale at Mouthpiece Cafe

This looks like a nice site and they have a sale for the whole of July.

http://www.mouthpiececafe.com/

Bill Evans

Truely inspirational stuff - a must view

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QdM0oxWOZw&feature=related

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.