Ok here's my practice tape for Autumn Leaves. Stops and starts and all that.

When I practice a tune like this in this way, I just try stuff and messing around in different keys. I'll try technical stuff, and melodic ideas. Anything.

If I space out or lose the form, then I just stop and focus and try again.

How do you practice the tune? Maybe give us a 5 minute snippet of you practicing and let us know how and what you're doing.

So a local arts organization, the Hopkinton Cultural Arts Alliance (www.caahop.org), did some renovations and used some of the leftover materials to create a really nice outdoor "amphitheater" performance area. I managed to get a grant to run a series of five concerts in the space, and the video above is from the last one, where my band, the MetroWest Jazz Project played. The video was taken by a local news site (www.hopnews.com) and shows the end of my solo and part of the guitar solo on "Sky Dive" and the beginning of "Yes or No".

Here is our first EOTM by David Friedman. I'm hoping David will become our EOTM man. He has all these creative ways of playing scales and doing exercises. So let's see if we can get him to be our EOTM CEO.

Here's the first one. This is a great idea actually. If you practice one of these exercises each month and just for the month I would argue that technically it will alter your playing for the better. I'm going to do it also!

Check out the pdf below.

And for some totally different news......

I'm going to be a father in Januari! Not really planned but totally welcome and I'm really excited!

So watch out you young vibe cats!

Cu

TJ

Hey Everybody,

Yesterday I saw Gary Burton play at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland. It was awesome and I recorded one song on video. I'm waiting for Gary to see if he"s allowing me to post and if it's ok I'll post that soon.

And ofcourse I had to record this moment:

Gary Burton & TJ

“this one time, at band camp….”

I got home last night after spending a week at the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Workshop. While this is fresh in my mind, I thought someone may find value if I wrote about it and posted it here.

The first part is a talks about the format of the camp, the second is my personal take on the class, and a few suggestions that may make it easier if you are ever considering going.