Hello everyone,

I just wanted to share my enthousiasm on the program Rhapsody. It's a great program by Realplayer and let's you listen to loads of music(and a lot of jazz) without having to buy cd's or tracks! They have a subscription that is about 12 dollars a month and you can listen to full length tracks unlimited. And the good thing is that you can also download the tracks so you can listen to them offline.

I'm using this now as a tool to get to know a lot of jazz standards. You can search by track name and then you can listen to versions of a tune by many different artists.

Hey Tony,

A few days ago I got a call by some 60 + jazzband and I have a gig with them on the 2nd of november. They're probably not that good, but hey this is a good way to get a tune list going. They sent me a list of tunes, and that's the tunes I'll work on now. an, I love Rhapsody! Just downloaded a lot of versions of different tunes and I can also listen to them offline... Oh yeah, I'll post about that on the site also.

The conversation that recently took place regarding improvising on the blues has given me food for thought for a blog. I think intellectualizing music through analysis is a good thing if fully understood. The process of analyzing music helps to teach and learn new things about music and often helps to find weaknesses and holes in our knowledge.

I shot some video tonight which is going to be used in future Percussion Geeks episodes. I thought I'd give some of you a sneak preview sneak on of the performers was playing a Gyil which is the ancient ancient ancestor to the vibes/marimba. Where it all started.

I took one of the pieces and edited it really quick just to give you guys a sneak preview.

Hey Tony,

Finally got the first chorus of the Dexter Solo Complete and recorded....All memorized...nothing written down. The recording quality isn't so hot...I need to figure out how to get the volume higher for the microphone, but I'll try to post a better one in a day or two. I'm pretty excited, transcribing has always been really hard for me and I feel like this is a good step in the right direction.

Phew, that's a hard tune to play solo on! I did sort of my version. I'm hoping one of you guys get the etude down and perform that. I would like that! But here's my version based on the etude!

This podcast just talks about the opening chords to the etude. There's a link to the lead sheet if you don't have it. Also there's a link to the lesson plan to see what other lessons for this etude have been posted.

what's happening? how's the hand?

jonathan,

i think it's totally cool that you're posting things in public and getting people to talk about it. that will totally help you i think.

i'm sorting this all out as i go, and i'm thinking when you post a new version of something maybe post it in 2 ways.

one: post it to the group which is me and you and keep that private

then leave the group. just go to the home page, then click post and post it there for the public.

I was having some thoughts on transcribing so I thought I'd post them here.

So I was transcribing the Steve Nelson solo on Beautiful Love today and I remembered some guys here talking about programs to slow down music to transcribe and stuff like that.

My thoughts on that are that you shouldn't even want to use that kind of stuff to transcribe.