Anyone coming to the APAP convention tonight? I know there are hundreds of groups performing.

This is what I call the grind. Trying to get gigs and things happening at these conventions is crazy. The thing about it is I sat at a table of musicians who have played this convention for years and all said they have never booked a gig through this. This is a HUGE convention. Someone said there's a 20-30 minute wait for the elevators... and I'm playing on the 4th floor.

Terry Gibbs Killin' it!!!!!

I met Miss Jones this morning (and all at once I lost my breath, and all at once was scared to death), and then I e-mailed the vibes-bass-dms track to my friend J.B. down in the South of France. JB put the piano on top. The ending is one that I heard Stephane Grappelli play many times.

Some cool early Piazzolla/Burton footage! Double click on the video there's more on Youtube

If you're coming to the workshop please do a few things.

1. Fill out the registration: http://www.vibesworkshop.com/node/2710/
If you're coming to the workhshop PLEASE fill out a registration form.
This is so we can get an accurate count of attendees.

2. Please pay in advance! This will really help us and you will save money. It's so important that we make it cheaper. It helps us to know whether we can buy drinks on the plane!

Here's an etude I wrote to demonstrate lines moving through scales. The sort of weaving up and down the scales that you hear advanced players do. Hopefully by playing this etude you can get some insight into all that. It's a blues, so fill in the chords and then analyze the lines against the chords. Remember if you were comping to this, you'd have to change the extensions of the chords to fit the lines. Say for instance the first note was a B and the chord was F7. Well then you'd play most likely an F7 Bb.

Here's a quick lesson I made for a student about intros and endings. If this is of interest to you let me know and I'll make more.

Jam Session at Bedlam BBQ
I always find it interesting to talk about the different jazz "scenes" in different places. Its pretty neat. Its like each city has its own direction that jazz is moving in. If i understand correctly, Philly is pretty old school and in New York everyone wants to sound like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner. Denton Texas is Brecker. In Oklahoma all my friends are really into the Miles and Coltrane stuff of the 60's. The crazy Post Bop stuff. A couple people are exceptions.