Wynton Marsalis knows how to practice. As a younger man, he was equally at home in front of a symphony orchestra playing the Haydn concerto, or laying down some serious jazz with Art Blakey. Check out his 12 Rules of Practice after the video.
Tag: Dizzy Gillespie
In Praise of Never Being Good Enough
Music is endless, and there’s always more to practice, more to learn, more to do. The limitlessness can be intimidating, especially to beginners, or to those stuck in the “conscious incompetence” phase (one of four phases of musicianship/practice described in The Practice of Practice). But once you realize the fact, and make peace with it, having endless horizons to explore is liberating. Exciting, even. Then you just have to get started. Check out these great vids from veteran explorer Dizzy Gillespie.
Small Percussion: Perfect Gift for Musicians
Check out trumpeter Lee Morgan and alto saxist Wayne Shorter play small percussion on this killing performance by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. They’re playing Dizzy Gillespie’s tune, Night in Tunisia. Gotta be one of the best versions around.
Jymie Merritt’s burning fast bass solo is accompanied by some precise hits from all the small percussionists (starts @ 4:00).
The next several posts will focus on the small percussion instruments below and will include videos explaining techniques for these small instruments you can easily toss into your gig bag.
SoundSlice: YouTube Learning Goodness
If you’re like me, you get a lot of learning done on YouTube, but isolating a passage and repeating it, let alone notating it in some way, is difficult if not impossible. Not any more! Check out SoundSlice.
SoundSlice is a fantastically useful tool geared towards guitarists, but it’s useful for anybody who learns by watching video. Adrian’s done many cool things as a programmer (check his site), and has an album out of his most popular fingerstyle tunes here, most of which you can also find on SoundSlice, like the Beatles tune, Yesterday. Check out the link to Yesterday for a good example of how the site works.
The Practice of Practice 