Broken Waltz- New Matt Otto CD

 Matt Otto is Kansas City based saxophonist, educator and blogger who has been featured many times on this blog. I've known Matt for over twenty years and we still play together on occasion. In August Matt will be coming out to Portland to do a few gigs with me at the Camellia Lounge and the Blue Monk. He will also be doing a master class on August 5th. Email me if you are interested in registering. I will be posting more information about that class soon.

Matt has been releasing his recent CDs exclusively on his blog, which happens also to be one of the best Jazz educational sites on the internet. Otto is asking his blog readers to send him a donation for any amount, in return he will send a link to download MP3 or FLAC files along with Concert PDF charts for all 10 tunes! The recording is beautiful, the playing is killing and the tunes are really interesting. I am really looking forward to playing some of these compositions when Otto comes to town.

  Otto is one of the leading tenor saxophonists of his generation and if you haven't checked out his educational website you should see all of the great free lessons he has posted.

Matt Otto will be performing at:

Camellia Lounge

(510 Northwest 11th Avenue  

Portland, OR 97209)

Saturday, Aug. 4th

8pm-11pm

w/David Valdez, George Colligan, Chris Higgin and Todd Strait

The Blue Monk

3341 Southeast Belmont Street  

Portland, OR 97214

Sunday, Aug. 5th

8pm-11pm

w/David Valdez, Chris Higgins, Chris Brown

download Matt Otto's new CD Broken Waltz w/PDFs

Lawrence Williams 3-horn arrangements

Last weekend I played a gig with a group called The Lawrence Williams Project, which I have co-lead with pianist Dan Gaynor for almost ten years. Lawrence Williams was a close friend of ours who passed away about six years ago. He was an incredible drummer and an equally great Jazz composer. We try to keep his music alive by performing it once or twice each year, but I also thought I would  post some of the charts here on this blog so more musicians around the world could have the experience of playing these beautiful tunes.

I have posted audio files for many of these tunes along with the PDF parts on my Posterous media server blog. Below are links to each tune:

Ballad for Gene Parker
A Song for Strength
Early One Morning
Love of Life
Blues on Piano
Love's Resolution Within
Number 3
Forever Clear
When I Come Home
Hearing is Believing

David Demsey explains Joe Allard's method

  Tonight I listened to David Demsey describe Joe Allard's teaching method in great detail. This was one of the Bulletproof Saxophone Method lessons and I have never heard anyone relate Allard's concepts so well.  I have posted several articles about Allard's system on this blog (Allard Unveiled, Allard Overtone Exercises, Allard videos) and I think that any saxophonist would be making a big mistake to overlook the ideas of this master teacher.

 Allard really stressed overtone work and Demsey describes why this sort of work is so important. I recently got a keyless saxophone and have been working with it for a few months. I always knew that overtone work was critical and I always teach overtone exercises to my students, but I never really spent a ton of time working on overtones until I started working with the keyless sax. I noticed a huge change in my control and quality of my sound in just a few weeks of regular overtone work. I wrote a bunch of overtone exercises and will post them soon.

 
(Yes, Bulletproof Sax Method is one of the banner ads on this blog, but I do not accept advertising for any products that I do not fully endorse and recommend to my own students. You will not see ads for Cannonball saxes on this blog!!)

Clarence "C" Sharpe bootleg unearthed

photo by Otto Flückiger

 When I was just sixteen years old a bassist named Ted Wald moved to Santa Cruz (were I grew up) from New York City. Ted had been in the trenches of the NYC Bop scene for 40 years before leaving the city to follow a young girlfriend out west, and to seek a healthier lifestyle. Ted was a true old school Be-Bopper who had played with a who's who list of Jazz greats, including Bird himself. I felt a little closer to the smokey clubs of NYC when ever I played with Ted. Ted always had a million stories of about all the cats he had played with. He was one of the few white musicians in the circle of players that he ran in. Ted was also the first white Muslims, maybe even the first Muslim,  that I had ever met. Ted never really spoke much about his faith and I didn't really know what to ask him since I hadn't been exposed to that culture, having been raised in a lilly white California beach town. Ted was also the first bassist I'd played with that refused to use an amplifier, which for him was also sort of a religious belief. Ted knew a ton of standards and he never cared what key anything was played in. He didn't read music and every solo he took was a walking solo, old school all the way.

photo by Otto Flückiger

  One name that constantly came up in Ted's stories was Clarence Sharpe, who he usually just referred to as "C" Sharpe. Ted had played with Sharpe for years and had the highest respect for him. He would always say that Sharpe was the baddest Bebop saxophonist in NYC, despite that fact that he had no teeth and played wildly out of tune. I could never fathom how a guy with no teeth could ever play the saxophone at a high level, let alone be the baddest cat on the scene. I guess I figured that Ted was exaggerating a bit, turns out that he wasn't. I had always asked Ted if there were any recordings of Sharpe and he had lost the only bootleg that he had. Sharpe had recorded on a Lee Morgan record called Indeed, but that apparently wasn't a good representation of his playing. Sharpe had struggle with heroin addiction for many years and that may have been a factor in his failure to get a recording career off the ground. Of course the fact that Sharpe had wildly erratic intonation, because of his lack of teeth,  couldn't have helped his mainstream marketability either.

I ran into a post on Face Book the other morning by saxophonist Alex Hoffman about Sharpe. Alex had posted a link to a blog called Crown Propeller that posted a bootlegged recording of Sharpe playing with Ted Wald, Walter David Jr., Lonnie Hillyar, and Jimmy Lovelace at a club called the Tin Palace. The recording is a bit rough and you can hear some clear conversations while the music is playing, which is actually quite interesting. The band is burning, but Sharpe stands out, despite the expect intonation issues he is a monster. I finally understand what Ted was raving about.

I sent Ted a link to the recording and he was very happy to finally hear this band that he he spent so much time time playing with. Here is is reply to me:

  
"Salaam Aqui,
First thank you, thank you, thank you.  I miss those guys.  I am the only one left.  Maybe Sharpe didn't know anybody was recording us because for a long time people were begging us to record and Sharp was not about doing it because he didn't have any teeth.  (He had portable ones which used to come flying past me in the second tune whenever we played.)  I spoke to a piano player, Tardo Hammer, who said to me, "Man, Bird Lore, (the C-Sharpe Qunitet) was bad.  Maybe the baddest in New York at the time."  I saw some blurb on the tube about some critic named Parsells who made it his business to hear that band in '79 or '80.  I do have a tape somewhere in my belongings.  I had others but someone swung with a tape of Sharpe, Walter Davis, Jimmy Lovelace and myself playing "Pennies from Heaven".  I do appreciate what you sent. 

Peaceful, peaceful. Blessings, thank you for living, Ted (Said Khalid)

P.S.  Also Thanks to Stanley Crouch for ever booking us.  Sharpe was mostly surviving tutoring and teaching at the University of the Streets.  Mostly he was a living legend and my friend."

105 Minutes with legendary Clarence "C" Sharpe



105 Minutes with Clarence "C" Sharpe.

Targeting- by Jason Klobnak

 We've been dealing with chromatic approaches here lately and I ran across an interesting book on the topic a few weeks ago. The book is called Targeting and was written by a Denver trumpet player named Jason Klobnak. Jason uses the term targeting rather than approaches or enclosures because he takes a broader view of the concept. Jason defines targeting as aiming and moving at a goal note with purpose.

 In the beginning of his book Jason covers the more conventional chromatic approaches in the same way that I usually present the material to my own students. He explains the ten different ways that one can chromatically approach any given note- from a half-step to a minor third.

(click the graphic above for larger version)

 I usually have my students practice approaching every chord tone (including #11, b9, #9, 13 and b13) using each one of these ten different chromatic approaches. I can't stress how important this one technique is. Once you really get these approaches under your fingers you can use them to create, not only great Bop lines, but you can also combine these approaches to create ultra-modern, super-hip, knock-grandma-off-her-rocker, snaky chromatic-banana lines. As long as you keep the forward motion going then your target can keep moving and your destination never has to come, like an acid trip that never seems to end...but enough of my wasted youth, let's get back to Jason's book.

 Jason goes on to deal with using targeting to create longer flowing lines, like in the example below:

(click the graphic above for larger version)

Next Jason branches out a bit to talk about Pentatonic, Blues and Digital Pattern Targeting:

(click the graphic above for larger version)

The next chapter deals with Diminished and Altered Dominant Targeting:

(click the graphic above for larger version)

The final chapter puts everything together with some nice etudes. I am quite impressed with this book, such a crucial technique for Jazz students deserves a thorough and complete book like this one.

You download Targeting (in English or Spanish) for $12 or get a hard copy for $16.50 at
Jason Klobnak Music

Bulletproof Saxophone Playing

Doron Orenstein over at Best.Saxophone.Website.Ever. has put together a package of six different lessons with some of the top saxophone teachers in the country. What Doron did was to set up Skype lessons with these teachers and then record them, probably with something like Audio Hijack Pro. There are roughly six hours of lessons and two PDF supplements in which Doron has done an excellent job of summarizing the concepts and exercises from the lessons.

 The lessons focus mostly on saxophone specific issues like breathing, embouchure, throat position, tonguing, articulation, intonation, and technique. I haven't listened to all of the lessons, but those I did check out were very good. A couple of my students bought the package and they both had major breakthroughs, one in regards to pitch and the other had a major improvement in sound. Despite Doron's penchant for hyperbole there is a lot of really great information in these lessons. I can't remember seeing anything that focused as much on just the mechanics of playing the horn.

  I would have to say it's a great deal to get six hours of recorded lessons for less than the price of one with a live teacher. The cost of BPSP is $44.95 for all the audio and the PDF book, $34.95 for just the audio, and $14.95 for just the PDF book. Doron also offers a 100% money back, no questions asked guarantee. You really have nothing to lose except bad saxophone playing.

Bulletproof Saxophone Playing

Jazz bari sax transcriptions at jazzbarisax.com

At jazzbarisax.com you can download 45 free bari transcriptions by players like Mulligan, Adams, Smulyan, Cuber and Brignola. Makes me want to find myself another bari.

Jazz Bari sax transcriptions

George Garzone's Random Chromatic Approach

George Garzone

 Jody Jazz released a two DVD package on George Garzone's Triadic Chromatic Approach a while back, which I did an extensive review of on this blog. The DVDs covered two main concepts, the Triadic Chromatic Approach and the Random Chromatic Approach. The first, the TCA, is a way to created 12-tone lines on the fly. I wrote a few TCA etudes to illustrate this concept, see links below:
Etude 1
Etude 2
Etude 3

The other main concept is the the Random Chromatic Approach, something I did not write much about and I think it is worth considering. The RCA can be thought of as a Post-Bop chromatic approach (as opposed to a Bebop chromatic approach). The Bebop chromatic approach, or 'enclosure' as some educators like to call it, is a way to link ideas together, add interesting directional elements and to give more forward motion to a line. Below are a few examples of Bebop approaches from Steve Neff's Approach Note Velocity book:

Bebop lines just would not sound like Bebop without this essential element and every student of Bop would do well to spend plenty of time working this. First start out with the simplest approaches and work on approaching any given chord tone with every type of approach. One could even argue that armed with only a knowledge of chords and Bop approaches a player could create a compelling Bebop solo without ever learning chord/scales.

Garzone has an interesting take on the chromatic approach, and it is quite an easy, especially compared to the difficulty of his Triadic Chromatic Approach. Below are a few pages from Garzone's ebook that comes with the TCA DVD.

 

(click the above graphics for a larger version)

If you follow Garzone's guidelines you will end up with very modern sounding chromatic lines that have a lot of forward motion. These random chromatic lines serve to same purpose that traditional Bebop chromatic approaches: they give lines interesting direction, they link ideas together and they add forward motion to the line.

In the TCA DVD Garzone has several play-along tracks where he trades fours, giving the student a chance to respond to his phrases. A former student of mine in Japan transcribed George's fours from the DVD and it is quite interesting to see exactly how he constructs his chromatic lines. George doesn't strictly follows his own rules (also the case when it comes to his TCA), so do not be surprised if you do not see the concepts from the PDFs above strictly applied.

Garzone's Random Chromatic Approach Transcription

I highly recommend both of the Garzone/Jody Jazz DVDs to any student looking to add more modern concepts to their playing. Also worth noting is the fact that Jody has drastically cut the price of the TCA DVD since it was first released.

Garzone's Triadic Chromatic Approach DVD

In the Funk Zone with George Garzone

Freddy's Guide to Creative Improvisation

First off I want to apologize for slacking off on posting here. I was out with a cold for a while and then taxes have been looming. Most of all I've just been very lazy. I do have a lot of things in the pipeline, so please bear with me here while I struggle to get my ass in gear.

 There have been a ton on new multimedia Jazz educational products coming out lately. It seems that the Jazz world is really starting to take full advantage of the digital age, better late than never I guess. Some of these products are online video lessons, some are play-along CDs, and some are full interactive multimedia DVDs.

 One of my teachers when I was at Berklee who was a big influence on me was Fred Lipsius. I posted an interview with Lipsius a while back. I took several ensembles with Fred, so I didn't get a lot of material directly from him other than getting to listen to him play, which was inspiring in itself. I really got to understand his concepts through studying his books. In 1986 Warner Brother's published an incredible book that Lipsius wrote called The Complete Book on Creative Improvisation. That book was a goldmine of material for me and shaped the way I thought about Jazz improvisation to this date. It was was worthy of being called 'the Complete book' because is covered so much ground. It had a ton of great musical phrase and licks in every key and for chord type and then it went in to great depth on how to manipulate, develop, and apply these licks to all different types of musical situations. Lipsius really presented a high flexible and creative alternative to the typical rote memorization approach that is too common in Jazz education. The licks in the book were all super hip, but the important thing was to see how to take any existing musical idea and apply it in numerous ways over different harmonic situations.

 Lipsius' Complete Book on Creative Improvisation went out of print shortly after it was first published and after loaning my copy out I was never able to get my hands on another one, though I saw a few on Amazon for upwards of $100. I was quite excited to hear that Fred had released it again himself, this time is in full multimedia format. There are hundreds of videos online on 3 DVDs that feature Lipsius playing individual musical ideas, talking about what he was thinking about when he came up with them and how to apply each one. You can also now buy a hard copy of Lipsius' book for $19.95.

Below are a few pages from the book to give you some idea of the kind of material it offers. One of the most interesting things about the book in my opinion is how much Lipsius focuses on motivic development, a topic that is usually under emphasised. You can click on any of the pages below to get a larger version.

Fred also deals a lot with how to apply the same musical idea to many different harmonic situations. Here are a few pages dealing with Blues scale applications:

 

Here is a chapter dealing with Tri-tone subs:

Here is the official press release for Freddy's Guide to Creative Improvisation :

Music Students and Professional Musicians Get More Creative And Learn How To Be A Great Improviser With Online Video Training for the PC, Mac, and iPad at Freddy’s Guide To Creative Improvisation: www.FreddysGuide.com

Freddy’s Guide To Creative Improvisation features Berklee College of Music professor Fred Lipsius who is a two-time Grammy Award-winning musician and original band member of Blood, Sweat & Tears with 9 Gold Records. The training is available now at FreddysGuide.com for the introductory price of $49 (price will change to $99 on Jan. 22nd) and provides one whole year of 24/7 access to over 300 video clips of Fred Lipsius teaching from his book on Creative Improvisation.

 For music students and professional musicians eager to become great improvisers, online training has finally arrived via Broadband Internet for the PC, Mac, and iPad.  Educational multimedia publisher, ETERNAL WAYS, has partnered with Berklee College of Music professor, Fred Lipsius, to help musicians on any instrument unlock their creative potential for improvisation: online music instruction with hundreds of licks, scales, techniques, exercises, and solos to teach anyone how to be a great improviser. Playable 24/7, this online portal at http://www.FreddysGuide.com allows students and professionals to learn what they want, when they want, and at their own pace for a full 365 days. All that is required is Internet access and a basic knowledge of chords and scales.

“Our goal was to create a low-cost, simple and friendly online learning experience that allows any musician, from any place in the world, to access Fred’s interactive video instruction for an entire year. Becoming a great improviser takes a lot of time and practice which is why the training is available for 365 days. It is like having your own private instructor on-demand.” says John Pritchard, Founder and Creative Director of ETERNAL WAYS. “In addition to being one of the world’s greatest improvisers, Fred is an outstanding instructor who has been teaching at Berklee for over 25 years. His book on Creative Improvisation is second to none.”

Here is what legendary musician, Randy Brecker, has to say about Fred’s book: “This is one of, if not, the most comprehensive book on improvisation that I have yet encountered. The student (or professional) is led systematically into getting beyond the rote learning of patterns and cliches, into understanding the spontaneity and creativity that is true jazz improvisation.” Randy has played trumpet with The Brecker Brothers, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Steely Dan, Charles Mingus, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Zappa and many more.

Eddie Gomez, bassist for Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Herbie Hancock says, “Fred Lipsius has written a clear and comprehensive study on the art of improvisation.”

Paul Shaffer, Musical Director of the Late Show with David Letterman, calls Freddy’s Guide to Creative Improvisation “An eminently usable reference from a brilliant cat!”

Adam Holzman, keyboardist for Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Grover Washington and Faculty member of the New School
for Jazz and Contemporary Music, NYC says, “Freddy's Guide To Creative Improvisation is an original and exciting method for teaching what is almost unteachable: the art of improvisation. A well thought-out and balanced approach.”

The online training is designed for all instruments and works on any computer with a broadband connection. It plays especially well on the iPad and the video looks and sounds great, even on the iPhone.

Price: $99/yr
Special discounts are available for music teachers/instructors/schools with 10 or more students.

The 188 page book is included as an eBook (PDF format for high resolution screen magnification and printing) and is also available separately in print for $29.99. A 3 Disc DVD Series of the training features licks, techniques, and solos for $99. 

If you are a musician who wants to learn from a pro, Freddy's Guide To Creative Improvisation contains everything you need to know about improvisation! Freddy unveils the mystery of creative improvisation to help you become the great improviser you can be.


To learn more and sign up to get your own password, go to www.FreddysGuide.com

Chris Potter's solo on Confirmation

Chris Potter offers lessons through the ArtistShare web site. If you can't afford to fly to NYC to study with Potter in person it's a nice alternative. Saxophonist/educator Adam Roberts has transcribed Potter's solo on Confirmation from the ArtistShare lessons. The solo is nine choruses long and must have been a bitch to transcribe. Adam also gives a short chorus by chorus analysis of the solo.

Thanks Adam!

Confirmation- Chris Potter's ArtistShare lesson

Charles McPherson live at PDX Jazz Festival

 The PDX Jazz festival is happening this month here in Portland. It seems the number of national acts was significantly scaled back this year, probably a common trend these days. Don Lucoff recently took over as the director of the festival and seems to be running things a bit differently. Don seems to think that every performance should have a theme. Maybe it's from his years of doing promo work, or maybe it's just that he wants to feel like he's actively 'artistically directing' the musicians. For example he asked George Colligan to make the theme of his performance 'the music of Andrew Hill'. This was George's first big show after moving to town and I would guess that, although George enjoys Andrew Hill's music, he wouldn't consider Hill to be an influence on his playing.

  Was Lucoff thinking that Portland listeners would be more likely to come to see George play if they thought there would be some Andrew Hill music involved? Colligan is a prolific composer in his own right and I'm sure he would have much preferred to play his own composition (which he ultimately ended up doing), rather than Hill's music. Don suggested themes to many of this year's festival performers. Some of this year's themes were: 'The Lure of the Jazz Lyric', 'Classically Carmen', 'For Portland Only', and 'PDX Afro-beat Breakdown'.  It whole idea just seemed pretty forced to me. When you let marketing considerations dictate the choice of material the musicians play on the shows that you book then you are limiting the freedom of the musicians to choose what kind of material they play, and ultimately the degrading the quality of the performances. Let the musicians dictate the material that they feel will be the strongest representation of what they do. They know what kinds of tunes they sound best playing. Let the theme of the festival and of each performance just be 'The best possible music that each performer can present'. Why try to shoehorn players into the shoes of the Jazz masters?  I do however think that bringing in a seasoned Jazz PR pro managing the PDX Jazz Festival was a smart move. Enough with the themes though.

 The performance I was looking forward to the most was Charles McPherson's 'Tribute to Prez (the show was on President's day after all) and Bird'. Isn't every one of Charles' shows a tribute to Bird really? It wasn't a stretch, but why ask Charles to limit his choice of material to tunes that Bird or Prez played? The house was packed, but they were there to hear Charles, not because they were hoping to hear Lester Leaps in or Star Eyes.

 If I had to choose one favorite living Jazz saxophonist it would be Charles McPherson, no contest. I first heard him when I was still a teen and I remember being totally floored by his playing. First of all Charles has and incredibly beautiful and huge alto sound, with the best qualities of Bird's tone. The next thing you notice is his malleable time feel. He just floats on top of the time, constantly shifting between different metric modulations and then occasionally drops into to some extremely hard swinging 8th note lines.  Actually, 'metric modulations' isn't even the best way to describe what Charles does because it sounds so much more organic than that. A more accurate way to describe what Charles does with time would simply be bad-ass. I don't know of anyone else who does what he does with time.

 Charles doesn't leave a lot of space, and I mean that in a good way. Let's just say that if he were paid by the note he'd be a very wealthy musician by now. His concept is kind of like a Bebop version of Trane's 'sheets of sound'. Charles is constantly coming at resolutions from different directions, circling around changes like a swarm of angry hornets. From what I can tell, he seems to be using some of Barry Harris' harmonic concepts, including lots of diminished substitutions (like Trane did in his Sheets of Sound period). He has a classically Bebop vocabulary, but he is definitely applying a lot post-bop harmonic innovations and chord substitutions in his approach. I even heard some lines from Slonimski's book sever times during the evening. One thing about Charles' approach is that he doesn't hold back, he goes for it all the way. I love when players are like this. I want to hear someone really go for the gusto, balls out. Forget sounding clean and controlled. I want careening and out of control. I want to hear some carnage, some cracked altissimo notes, some collateral damage! Charles is raw, but he certainly still sounds polished. The beauty of his sound seems to allow him to get away with the wildly aggressive and dense playing he puts out.

 I had a chance to talk to McPherson before his set at Jimmy Mak's. He told me that he was playing on a modern hard rubber Meyer 6. Nothing special really. I've heard that Charles is always experimenting with different pieces. Last time he was playing in Portland I think he was playing on an older Meyer, maybe a Meyer Brothers or a NY Meyer. He was still using a Vandoren Optima ligature this time. When I heard him last I was amazed at how big his sound was. I just couldn't see how he could be getting such a huge sound playing a Meyer 5 or 6, so I had to try the ligature that he was using. What else could it be? He isn't a really big guy, so how did he do it?! I ordered myself an Optima ligature as soon as I got home....and...what do you know, it sucked. Didn't make my sound any bigger, just a little brighter.

 Before the PDX show Randy sat with Charles and had a 'conversation' (thanks to Don and actually a good idea). Charles talked about the fact that he thinks of time not as something to 'play with', rather as something to 'play against'. This idea isn't as common among players and educators as you might think. Many teachers try hard to impress on students the need to always 'lock in' to the time. McPherson creates a high degree of rhythmic tension by floating out of time, but he always comes back 'inside' and swings his ass off just long enough for his listeners to catch their breaths. Then he's off like a Bebop banshee again. The late Jimmy Mosher, one of my first teachers, was one of the few saxophonists that had a time feels as elastic as McPherson. That is not surprising because McPherson was one of Mosher's biggest influences, another was Charlie Mariano, who also had a loose time feel. I posted some great bootlegs of Jimmy Mosher's live shows a while back.

 I bootlegged McPherson's set with my Zoom digital recorder. I was sitting at a table that was basically right in front of the stage, so the recording came out pretty well. Charles played six tunes, which were all crushing. I asked him for his permission to post the recording here and he suggested that I post a few tunes, rather than the entire set. I choose his renditions of I'll Remember April, Embraceable You, and Cherokee. I also recorded McPherson's conversation with Randy Porter, which is quite interesting. The local rhythm section Charles used is Randy Porter on piano, Tom Wakeling on bass and Alan Jones on drums.

Enjoy!


Charles McPherson live at Jimmy Mak's- PDX Jazz Festival 2/20/12

Charles McPherson's web site
Charles McPherson interview
YouTube interview from San Diego Jazz Profiles- part 1
YouTube interview from San Diego Jazz Profiles- part 2
YouTube interview from San Diego Jazz Profiles- part 3
YouTube interview from San Diego Jazz Profiles- part 4

David Valdez/George Colligan Latin-Jazz Quintet live

On Feb.15th George Colligan and I played a Latin-Jazz gig at Ivories. Here are a few tunes from that gig.

Lydian Domination

Miriam Edward's New York Accent

Common Man

Ghostland

(These are large files and may take a minute to load in your browser)

Personnel:
David Valdez- alto saxophone
George Colligan- piano, composer
Dave Captein- bass
Todd Strait- drums
Chaz Mortimer- percussion

Jody Espina interview- new Jazz education products

 Jody Espina is the man behind Jody Jazz saxophone mouthpieces. Recently Jody has started producing some very interesting Jazz educational multi-media products. The first was a two DVD set featuring George Garzone's Triadic Chromatic Approach, which I reviewed here. Next Jody put out two play-along CDs featuring George Garzone and Kenny Werner called Tradin' with the Greats. Each one of these volumes is a two CD set. The first CD has George or Kenny playing the melodies and then trading choruses (leaving open spots for you to play) and the second CD has no melodies or trading.

 A lot of my own practice time is spent playing Aebersolds, so I was excited to try out Jody's new play-alongs. I really enjoyed the Tradin' with the Greats CDs, they were much more interesting and inspiring than working with Aebersolds. One big difference is that the bass and drums are not hard panned right and left, which makes the recording sound much more natural to play with. The CDs come with PDFs of all of the tunes in concert, Bb, Eb and bass clef. The first thing you really notice about these play-alongs is the high quality of the recordings and the level of musicianship. You get the feeling that the band wasn't just in the studio on auto-pilot with the awareness that there would be high-school kids playing to the finished tracks. These actually sound like good albums. I let a few of my students borrow these volumes and they loved them.

  The newest product that Jody released is the second Garzone instructional DVD set called In the Funk Zone. This volume deals with pentatonic scales and the musicians on the DVD are George Garzone, Mike Stern, John Patitucci, Rollins Ross and Kenwood Dennard. Garzone's TCA DVD was aimed at the advanced player, but this new pentatonic CD is definitely appropriate for all levels. In the new DVD George demonstrates how to use different pentatonic scales over straight forward Funk grooves, always stressing good time. Then he demonstrates how to move outside by side-slipping, using altered pentatonics and other techniques. Below is one example from the ebook:

click above graphic for larger version

  There are quite a few books on using pentatonic scales for improvisation on the market. I'm kind of a theory nerd, but Bergonzi's Pentatonics book makes my eyes glaze over in about two minutes. Garzone's DVD is very accessabile and has some unique approaches to using pentatonics, plus it's a lot of fun to Funk out with such a great rhythm section.

  I highly recommend all of Jody's new educational materials. They are well-thought out, original, have excellent production values and are they are a blast. Jody has drastically dropped the prices of these new volumes, so they offer great value for the money as well. The In the Funk Zone double DVD set is only $34.95 and the Tradin' with the Greats double CD sets are just $19.95 each or $37.50 for both volumes.

I interviewed Jody about his new products when I was at NAMM in January. You can hear the utter bedlam of NAMM in the background.

Here is my interview with Jody Espina.

Jody Jazz website

Jazz Truth interview

If you haven't checked out pianist George Colligan's great Jazz Truth blog yet then you are missing out. This Wednesday George and I are co-leading a Latin-Jazz quartet at Ivories Jazz Lounge here in Portland, so George decided to interview me for his blog to help promote our gig. Here is the interview.

Doug Web demonstrates the Tubax

One of the more interesting things I saw at this year's NAMM show was the Tubax, an Eb contra-bass saxophone one octave lower than the bari. Tuba+Sax+Tubax.

 The thing was abut as tall as a regular bari, except that it had more coiled tubing. The interesting thing about it was that the action on the right and left hands are almost parallel. It seems that Oleg is importing the Eppelsheim Tubax and stenciling his name on it. The retail price runs at just $30k for the big horn. Doug Webb, one of L.A.'s top saxophonists, was demonstrating the Tubax at NAMM. He told me that he had had one for several years, buying his when the price was somewhat lower. I would absolutely love to own one of these bad boys, but I'd also love to pay off my mortgage.

I recorded Doug playing the Tubax with my digital camera. Unfortunately my little camera wasn't built for the massive low frequencies that the Tubax puts out, so please forgive the peaking.

Here is another video of Doug demonstrating the Oleg tenor: