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Man I've been working on the tune Beautiful Friendship and it's kicking my ass. The melody, and the phrasing feel really unique to me. And I'm trying to play the tune right down the middle and it's really really hard.

I'm finding I have to kind of study all the spaces in the tune so I can play the melody right. Next the tune's second A doesn't resolve which is a little unusual. And sometimes I want to resolve it just like the last A!

Joe Magnarelli is on the road right now in spain. So he posts little words of wisdom over at the trumpet.jazzimprovonline.com. Here's his most recent post. I thought it was cool.

Just did a clinic in Llieda Spain, and realized that
when you get down to it, copying from the masters is the quickest way to get better.
You can study scales and patterns, that's cool, but when
stealing from the classic records you're getting scales and patterns too.
And you're understanding them in the context of a tune.
For example, check Fee-fi-fo-fum (spelling?)

I am working on playing a classical piece. I try to play it like I am performing. If I make a mistake while playing a slow line, should I try and correct it during the performance, or should I just let it be and continue on? If it is a fast line, I have no choice but to move on.

Thanks,
Barry

Music does not exist in a vacuum. As musicians we all need other people to appreciate our playing skills and our compositions. A musician's highest goal is to make music that will reach a large audience and maybe, just maybe, make a difference to those who hear us.

The Quartet that I have been playing with for a few months now just decided to record a demo to give out to places so we can score some more gigs. We met up at a school in a choir room and mic'd up and ran through with minimal takes. Then the bass player ran it through logic. Pretty quick and dirty.

I decided that instead of posting all the recordings on here, I would just post my myspace page with all my stuff.

www.myspace.com/joedoubleday

the group is:

Joe Doubleday- Vibes
Dr. Cory Gavito- Piano
Mike Boyle- Bass
Hal Corn- Drums

Pretty epic huh? I haven't listened to it for a long time. I installed Ubuntu on one of my PC's and set up last fm on it and have been listen to things I haven't heard in a long time.

Is that Freddie on trumpet? What a trumpet solo.

The cut I just listened to was Ella singing Mack the Knife. They have the wrong CD listed. Isn't this Live in Berlin? Where she forgets the words? Wow, who is the piano player on that? That is so swinging and then Ella does a Louie solo. OMFG.

I just had a great lesson with my student/buddy from Ohio, Jon Letsky. It's great to do the online lessons because I can see what I post in action. He's practicing invitation and doing the quarter note solos, chord tone solos and playing the tune through the keys and he's kicking ass with it all.

It's not a requirement to post stuff, but affirmation, completion and closure are important. At least with private students I get to see the stuff in action. What I've learned is at these ways of learning tunes DO work. I've seen them happen way too many times for it to be anecdotal.

We've been working trying to solve the Explorer problem but the reality is that Explorer is a big problem on any site. If you look through any CSS or html book, you see these parts where they show how to do cool stuff with the programming languages and then they tell you if Explorer can do it and if there's a way how to hack it to work. This has been forever.

Nothing I can say about loyalty, if you're into Explorer then ok, but if you're open, get Firefox, check out the cool add ons and then have a much better experience on the Internet.

I just found this guy, Felix Martinz, on You Tube. Really cool stuff he is doing with the vibes and his bands.

Invitation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGmI-6JHJDg

Vetne 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkgNuwtjBM8

Home Page:
http://www.martinz.se/

Barry

Man I listened to some Bud a while back and it got me hooked on the sound of going to the one chord from a half step above. Like Db to C. I love that sound and have been pulling it out all over the place. It's pretty cool. It's sort of like getting to the tri tone sub all the time.

Then I played a little gig with John Ellis (sax) over the weekend. And man he is a line manipulator! Being in that frame of reference and then listening to him was a great experience for me. It gave me so much to think about. It's kind of like being chromatic in a diatonic way. Does that make sense?