Indiana Streaming Broadcast Test

Finally got fairly good quality video and audio throughout! As opposed to when I tried in early spring and got mostly frozen video frames and occasional complete loss of the connection. Finally found some ingestion settings that seem to work for music streaming. Hopefully lots more to come!!

Some Altered Blues Changes

These blues changes sure are... altered. Tried to weave a coherent bassline through but with some trouble/uncertain spots. Tritone substitutions in measures 4, 7, 10, 11, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36?

Blues in F Bassline Exercise

 

Angel Eyes

Thanks for this great suggestion, a song I didn't know (and still to some extent don't) until today. Great melody and harmony - a lot of fun.

So In Love

What a treasure Cole Porter's many wonderful songs are. Although I'd heard a bunch and even sung a few in college, this is the first time I'm really delving into the marvelous and sometimes challenging (like here) melodies, chords, and song forms of his amazing creations.

The chords of So In Love move quickly and pull no punches, demanding fast changes on widely ranging harmonies while the melody along with the chords has numerous unexpected though awesome notes and passages as well. Oh yeah, and on sax it's getting into the somewhat deeper waters of more flat/sharp-rich keys; this is Ab, 4 flats (which I'm sure is ho-hom to someone who actually knows what he's doing but keeps me running, especially that Db).

So the bottom line is that this song sure gave a jazz freshman like me a real workout. That's the exact idea, and it was lots of fun practicing it. Oh, yeah, it did take 14 takes to get an even somewhat acceptable one. Haha. Back quite literally to the drawing board.

More to come!!!

Don't Get Around Much Any More

Whoohoo!!!! A new Ex Machina looping addition - a couple of 8-bar recordings of sax parts for the A part of the song before actually launching into it on bass and voice.

It's aliiiiive!!! After the looping automation crapped out a couple of days ago, I finally got around to troubleshooting it and building a better mousetrap. And it works!! Now I'm gonna think about additional configurations and arrangements featuring more and perhaps more sophisticated looping.

Feelin' the lyrics to this one. Enjoy!!!

Nearness of You

I loved this song ever since the marvelous Spizzwinks(?) album, Nudge, Nudge, 'Wink, 'Wink introduced it to me (along with several other wonderful and memorable recordings of classics like Since I Fell performed beautifully on this disc), but had never played or sung it until this go-around. This practice is definitely putting me through my paces - didn't quite know the melody, lyrics, or chords with proper precision before. Again, this is fun stuff!! Very encouraged.

Autumn Leaves

I expected to take today off from jazz practice, but lo and behold, in the mail arrived a real clapperboard for audio/video synchronization, a gift from my super-thoughtful mom, who'd seen my earlier videos banging a damn wooden rod against a mini-dry-erase board and decided I needed a little more class.

Inspired by, grateful for, and excited to use her gift, I asked her to pick a song to request. She offered several, all great choices I'll do sooner or later. I thought one of them was Autumn Leaves - turns out I might have missed that it was actually Autumn in New York! - and went about practicing it. Turns out I wanted to do it at a pretty fast tempo, at least for me.

The fast tempo wreaked havoc with my Ableton automation, and I wasn't gonna have time to troubleshoot before heading to the Riverside Park tennis court bluegrass jam, so I just turned on the metronome and went for it with bass and voice. Fun at this tempo!!! I'm gonna practice this song some more and get on top of it.

You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To

A Cole Porter classic I hadn't known 'til this go-around but remember my high school sax teacher, Chris Garone, mentioning in one particular lesson that at that moment he was really enjoying that song. He didn't actually play it for me then nor was it part of the lesson, so really all I knew was that he endorsed it. Certainly not that it was by Cole Porter, whose work I was yet to explore in more depth.

No surprise my teacher was right about this wonderful song. Here it is with the Ex Machina jazz treatment.

Bye Bye Blackbird

Initially heard this song via a wonderful arrangement by Allen Murabayashi for the Whiffenpoofs, and now find it a swinging addition to my jazz repertoire. Here's a first practice vid with vocals in addition to bass and sax!

Couldn't find an authoritative chart for this one, nor any that I could really fully endorse, so I merged/adapted all of them. I'm finding more often that the fake book charts need some alteration, sometimes correction, to sound right to my ear. Onward!

Blue Bossa

A second wonderful bossa nova jazz selection, recommended sagaciously by Matt A., gets the Ex Machina jazz treatment. More to come.

Black Orpheus

My maiden voyage with Ableton-looping jazz practice! Hoping to make this a habit and start learning the ropes. Meanwhile, this is fun!!!!