Before you pay your fee at the Green Mill–the famous jazz club in Chicago (and the birthplace of slam poetry) where gangster Al Capone hung out sometimes–a beefy guy with an impressive mustache, leather vest and bear claw necklace from Alaska will tell you that when the music starts there is to be NO talking….
Category: Master Musicians
Live Music is Best: U2’s 360 Show in Chicago
Usually, our experience of music is very abstract. It’s coherent sound coming out of a speaker, with no visuals of those who made the music, and not only that but the actual event of making the music is in the past, sometimes the distant past. This is why live music of any kind is such a powerful and necessary thing for your own music. To see live bodies in a room (or stadium) with you, making music, breathes life into what it means to make music. The art becomes real, palpably so, and takes on a resonance and meaning that goes well beyond a recording…
Book Review: The Music Lesson, by Victor Wooten
Ever heard of Victor Wooten? He’s a bass player best known for his amazing work with banjo master (yes, that’s right, banjo master) Bela Fleck. Wooten has written a book about music called “The Music Lesson,” but before we get to a review of the book, you may be wondering about Mr. Wooten’s credentials if you don’t know of him already. Watch beyond the first 50 seconds of the following vid and you might be amazed (you could well be amazed before that, too):
Question Limitations
Stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities. – Terry Josephson …… The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse. -Helen Keller…
Rafael Mendez, master of circular breathing
Rafael Mendez on Practice Had to post this great example of a Master. His thoughts on practice are pithy. And the advice for swimming underwater is great! Makes me think of surfers walking on the sandy bottom, holding rocks to keep them down. His examples of circular breathing and musicianship are phenomenal. Want to learn…
Slow Time
It seems necessary to riff on aspects of time lately, so here I go again. In an earlier post I mentioned the benefits of taking the Long Now approach to time, seeing yourself playing in the future, simply sticking with it. If four year olds and marshmallows rings a bell, you’ll remember from another post…
Video Posts
Hi All- I’m trying to make this a more interesting place to visit, and toward that end, I’ll be periodically posting videos of interesting music, interesting musicians, and other related visual/audio clips. If necessary I’ll say a little something about them, but mostly they’ll probably be related to recent topics, for example: The rhythmically chanted…
The Practice of Practice 