God Bless The Child - Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall

Sonny's playing at the Kimmel Center in Philly tomorrow night, so this video seemed appropriate. More mellow than his typical torrent. Great lyrical guitar solos.

Art Tatum - Yesterdays

Apparently there are only about 5 clips of Tatum playing. Enjoy this one.

Art Tatum's diatonic devices

Cool, Art Tatum's whirlwind technique dissected in slow motion!

Anyone want to see more of these lessons?

Play different moods, genres, & decades of music

This "Musicovery" programable radio is pretty cool. Neat visuals too.

You can check/uncheck the music genres you want - or select just one. Choose the decade(s), choose the mood - and see what starts playing.

Try it here.

Pat Matheny unloads on Kenny G - Part II

Part I was the video Tony posted - see the March 2006 blog archives.

Part II - Pat Matheny elaborates: "...But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths,..."

What did Kenny do? Read the rest here.

'Jazz Old Time' online - 1000's of free tunes!

Your folks, grandparents coming for Thanksgiving? They might enjoy browsing this site cause there's a lot of old timer stuff.

The hourly programs and playlists look especially cool. Got Billie Holiday singing "Be Fair to Me" right now. (You can skip past playlist songs you don't like.) Bing's on now...

Looks like if you subscribe for $5/3 months, you also can download well over 4,000 mp3's.

Look at all this music!

Jazz Resources Overload!!

Looked like a lot of folks were checking out the lessons at Berklee Shares, so I thought more lessons might be of interest. But this site has much more than lessons, including links to:

-instructions on the web
-instructions off the web
-theory
-chords and scales
-books, charts, and music off the web
-explanations of jazz
-trumpet stuff
-tunes lists
-musicians and composers
-academic articles
-periodicals
-calculators
-music software
-workshops
-radio stations
and more.

Click here to explore.

Find anything helpful??

Can you play when you're angry?

Recently Christophe Eschenbach announced his decision to step down from his post as conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra, making his five-year tenure the orchestra's shortest in nearly a century. Initially he gave no reason why. After rehearsal on Monday, it's reported that he told the orchestra that he had been surprised to learn from its president that 80 percent of the musicians did not agree with his artistic interpretations; that 80 percent of the musicians left concerts feeling great anger; and that the orchestra was a "ticking time bomb."

That got me thinking...can you make great music while you're angry?

Maybe it depends what you're angry about. If you're angry at your conductor, that's one thing, whereas if you're angry at social unjustice and playing protest music, that's another....and if you couldn't find a parking spot for your gig and just had to fork out another $20 to park in a lot, that's something else too.

I think an undercurrent of anger runs through some of Mingus' music...

Monk had a lot to be angry about (like having his New York City cabaret card unjustly confiscated so he could not perform for years in a place serving alcohol), but I don't think I've ever felt anger in his music, more like playfulness and joy....

But now I'm mixing up whether a certain composition sounds angry, versus whether a certain performer is angry while playing any kind of composition.

Maybe it's silly, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this. Can YOU play well when you're angry? Do you find you play BETTER if you're all fired up about something?

Time for a Monk Break

A classic Monk tune (Epistrophy) with a great Monk solo!

Fold your own paper CD case

Okay, I hesitated to post this because it's kind of goofy (although that hasn't stopped me before), but having just given away two CDs in ziplock sandwich baggies this week, maybe it could come in handy.

Anyone want to see if this works?

The Oldest Song in the World!

Ever get a request to play the oldest song in the world? Looks like it really swings...in a prehistoric kind of way. (Tony, you probably remember this one from back in the day, right?)

And check out the discussion of harmony in ancient music. Pretty clever, deducing harmony from the hand positions in harp pictures from antiquity.

Free lesson downloads from Berklee

If you miss the lessons offered at LarrysImprovPage.com while Tony is working on the new version of the site, check out Berklee Shares.

There are downloadable lessons (MP3 audio, Quick Time movie, and PDF files) from Berklee faculty and alumni, organized by instrument as well as by topics. Recording, improvisation, copyright infringement, navigating the ins and outs of the music business world, and lots more - looks like great stuff. And best of all, it's FREE FREE FREE!

On the topic of lessons, I recently was privileged to watch Larry McKenna teach a handful of high school and college students about improv. Not only is he an amazing musician, he is a patient and encouraging teacher. It's great that he continues to share so generously over the years - he mentioned he had actually taught the father of one of those kids!

Hear This: Online Ear Training

Is that a major 6th or a minor 6th?

Test and train your interval recognition at this nifty site. This "Big Ears" program plays a random interval and lets you try to guess what it is.

Hypnotic dots and sounds

Remember the psychedelic space travel sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey? This thing sort of reminds me of it. And I can't stop foolin with it.

Turn up your speakers and click here...

BEWARE the Pianolina - it's Addictive!!

Check it out!

"Play with the floating tones, create new atmospheric melodies and let yourself be fascinated by the charm of the Pianolina."

Tony tried the charm, and he's been glued to his computer ever since. He's not eating, missing gigs -- he even stopped shaving, if you can imagine that.

Click here if you dare...

Internet Music Radio - Jazz and other Genres from All Over the World

Here’s a cool internet radio site that streams music of many genres from all over the world with uninterrupted play.

I’ve been enjoying the “really good jazz station from Paris” and “Otto’s Baroque” classical music.

Next up – maybe Radio de la mer, “the first radio station in the world dedicated to the sea” (under Easy Lounge) or African Music Radio, “guaranteed true African music from all over the continent” (under International) . . . although who could pass up the Popular station offering “Boot liquor: Americana roots music for Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers”!

http://www.filtermusic.net